I really do love my parents. Very much. This is going to hurt like a bitch.

Do I get the feeling that my parents are grasping at straws to keep me young and pliable?

Yesterday I went shopping with my mum in the morning. It was after a surreally traumatic incident that took place by the light of the com in otherwise total darkness, at midnight and over. She knows all about it because she made most of the trouble.

We still went shopping. I had a thumping headache and I couldn't feel the extremities of my fingers. To say that I wasn't in the mood for being communicative was an understatement.

So to make me go somewhere, with ears to the handphone and eyes somewhere else, she grabbed my hand and felt around until her thumb found the pit of my wrist. And then she DUG HER THUMB IN.

You only do that when you want to disable people. She knows that very well. She used to practice taiji.


I think she was sorry afterwards, because I snarled at her for it in a fury for which I'm still guilty, and she bought me something nice. But today something started again.

(Sigh.)

She told me not to email so much and concentrate on my work. The 'concentrate on my work' part she'd been repeating all morning (in the face of all compliance) and at the moment I was doing the laundry. Excuse me for not being at my math right at the moment.

I think she got the 'email' idea from that surreal incident two nights ago, because she's never done it before. But what's consistent is that she doesn't know what she's talking about. Apart from the termly long letter I send to a friend who's now overseas, how fucking long can I spend on one email -- and how the fuck is most of it outside schoolwork? She blusters obliviously on the most ridiculous subjects all the time and it infuriates me to hell, especially when she tries to teach me with it. It's not as if she's irrational by rational choice. Allow me to give an example.

(scene: watching discovery channel)
programme host: The puffins nest on the cliffs in droves at mating season...
mum: oh! Oh! Puffins! These are puffins, you know!
me: Stop it, I can't hear what he's saying next.
mum: you think you know everything!


And it was like that today. I told her 'All right, but I don't think you know what you were talking about,' which was honest but a mistake because she was immediately pissed. So she went away for a while and came back and started talking about how I should 'do up my math'. I bit back some smart replies and said something mild. I don't remember what happened next. But we both got increasingly irritated and finally it was enough for my mouth to turn snarky, and she snapped: 'the problem is that you think too highly of yourself! What you lack is experience!'

I find the phrase 'you think too highly of yourself' an oxymoron so amusing I cannot hear it being said, to ANYONE, without getting angry. The first time was when I was in Korea -- a taunting voice I know very well from the back of the bus -- and I had to resist getting up and going back there to slap her across the face. It is one of the things anyone can say I hate most. Not only does it demonstrate personal complacency on the part of the speaker concerning his moral superiority, but also absolves him from all rational argument and, as long as benchmarks remain fuzzy or personalities private, will always be an assertion without basis in fact. It's all right to think it, to speak about it with people who may or may not agree with you, but to say it to someone in his or her face is to TELL that person that he or she is intentionally so, and -- even better, if you take the inductive meaning of it -- that the person who said it is less so. It is a self-righteous challenge. It is a deracination of truth. It is a flagrant and unshakably flimsy statement of accusation that nevertheless holds the power to disable reason.

This was what happened today. She said it. I stopped short.

Then I said, slowly and carefully: 'I know precisely what I lack. I'm not sure why you need to repeat things over and over again.'

I remember she said something to that after a long pause, and I said something I know very well in reply to it, but I can't seem to recall it at the moment. I know for certain she fumed a bit but my mind was blank with rage and I can't remember much. I finished the laundry.

I'm just thankful she didn't dismiss it all with 'You're just like your father'. That one is the worst and most irrational thing she can possibly say (and she says it often, whenever she finds herself cornered), and I always feel like watching a few souls burn in hell afterwards. She knows I go incoherent when I'm angry. This is what she does, and it usually ends an argument there and then because if I said anything afterwards it'd probably rip us all to shreds.

Oh! I've remembered what she said. My unhappiness was leaking out at the edges of my voice, so she took it as some kind of challenge and told me to 'respect my parents'. I remember very clearly how I responded, which was amazing because my brain was cold and dead by then. 'When you talk I must assume you know what you are talking about because I respect your intellect. What you need to do is to respect mine.'

I think there was nothing after that.

You can't blame me for feeling the least bit buay song.

Do you get the feeling that my mother at least is grasping at straws to keep me young and pliable?

Which of your elders still parrot the commentator on Discovery Channel under the impression that they're educating you?

WHO DOESN'T KNOW WHAT A TURTLE IS?

DO YOU REALLY PREFER THE APPEARANCE OF RESPECT TO THE REAL THING? I CAN GIVE YOU THE SHIT IF I STOPPED RESPECTING YOU. STOP TAKING IMAGINARY BEATINGS TO YOUR EGO AND AND LISTEN.