Parents

I was reading The Indian in the Cupboard the other day because my professor said to and I noticed something about that kid. When faced with problems, primarily behavioral problems from the indian, he resorts to acting like his parents to deal with it. He does it on purpose usually, using his dad's best "you're in trouble voice" or his mom's "eat your dinner and stop complaining" voice and it always works. But, it got me thinking about how when we turn into teenagers we usually vow never to be like our parents, to never grow up to be like them. I was bound and determined not to grow up and be like my parents when I was a teenager. But then I actually grew up and realized that I had ended up like them anyway. I would be minding my own business when I would do something and suddenly realize I was acting like one of my parents. Despite my best efforts I had grown up to be like my parents anyway. I think it's funny how that happens. We look at our parents and swear we're never going to be like that, but then it happens anyway whether we like it or not. The things we say or do, the little quirks we never really noticed before. The older I get the more I notice things I do that are like my parents. I never intended to grow up to be just like my parents. Don't get me wrong, they're good parents, some of the best, but that doesn't mean that I wanted to grow up and be a copy of them. My dad tells terrible jokes, who wants to grow up and be like that? But I keep discovering things that I do that are like my parents or even my grandparents, things that I didn't even know about them before. Maybe this is nature's way of preserving our legacy without us having to try. I do things that are like my grandpa that my dad doesn't do, or something my mom does that my grandma didn't. So, I'm like some interesting mixture of all of them all rolled up into one. Take little strains of all their personalities and squish them all together to make something new. The best part is that I do it without knowing that it is similar to one of my relatives. My liking for English, for instance. My mom was an English teacher and I knew that, but my grandmother on my dad's side was one too and I had no idea. That same grandmother was good at archery too, but I didn't go anywhere near a bow and arrow until college when I discovered I was really good at it. But, I didn't know that my grandma did archery in college too. I was very fond of picking on people in elementary school, especially the boys, and it wasn't until I was a teenager that I found out that my mom had been exactly the same way when she was younger. So, that whole nature vs. nurture thing, is pretty interesting. I can find arguments for both sides, but really I think everything is a mixture of the two. You can't attribute something to just one or the other because then you'll find evidence that it isn't just nature, it's nurture too, or the other way around. Well, when all is said and done, one way or another we're all going to be like our parents despite all our efforts to the contrary. For better or worse we get to end up like our relatives and the world gets to have another round of our own particular brand of person and personality. And that keeps life interesting. So, maybe growing up to be just like my parents isn't that bad. Between their personalities and mine we got an awfully interesting person out of it. And when I have kids they can all try their hardest not to be like me and my husband. Good luck with that, kids.