Good Son Gone Bad?

Today, I asked my parents if I could go to Great America later this week with some friends of mine, many of whom I won't see in quite a while. They said no, outright, on the spot.

Normally, a person might put down FML, or some other wonderfully witty acronym after the above. Instead, I sat back down to my laptop, put on my headphones, and continued searching some interesting subject on Wikipedia (might have been about The Rolling Stones, or the Vietnam War). I really had no opinion or feeling on my parents' refusal, until now in the morning, really. I guess the anger was simmering, but very rarely does it boil on over nowadays. (I had a nasty temper as a kid (think Joe Pesci), and it is sometimes very hard to keep control of it, especially in arguments). I find it rather cathartic to release my anger through words, instead of fists; my anger stems in part from my parents' rejection, but also in part towards my rather prejudiced view that they give carte blanche to my brother.

I sometimes wonder why they put such restrictions on me. My friend Mike tells me that they're just being overprotective, but a parent can only shield a child for so long. Still, I think most of my anger stems towards the preferrential treatment my brother recieves; back in high school, he was able to stay out longer than I am right now. For his last year of undergrad, before going to Pharm school, he was smoking out of an apple while playing Mario Kart with his roommates; his second semester, he studied abroad in Italy and traveled throughout Europe. He pretty much had this extra year of life to do what he wanted, by failing O.Chem and retaking it in the summer, thus switching from 2+3 to 3+3.

Ironically enough, I've got to go from a 4+3 to 3+3; getting a degree, whereas he did not. I suppose this is punishment enough for fucking up in the last 2 years of high school, but I'm just...aggravated that all of my efforts just feel like they go unheeded by them, or just don't seem to matter. I mean, what's the point in doing all that I'm doing to help my parents (saving a year's worth of tuition) if I can't even get a bit of freedom; last summer, I was stuck at a community college for 12 hours for 4 days a week taking 4 classes, so I could clear some GEs out of the way. I didn't travel. This summer, I've stayed cooped up in Folsom for nigh 3 months now, taking two Bio classes. I'd like to think my altruistic side is really doing this for my parents, as well as myself, but every person has a point where what they think they're doing isn't really adding up to the reality of the situation. In other words, for me, you might call it the breaking point. Luckily, school starts in a scant two weeks, and hopefully by this time next year, my scrotum will have dropped to the point where I can actually talk some sense into these people.

But, my testes aside, I'm just so tired of it; at the beginning of freshman year, in all my innocence, I would have told you that my reason to graduate early was to help save my parents' money, rather than get out on my own sooner. Now, with a few years of college under my belt, I feel like the balance has shifted to the latter, rather than the former. Selfish of me, I know; but I think everyone is entitled to a little selfishness now and then. Come to think of it, from the multitudes of shitty jobs I have ever worked, from taking orders from vermin at McDonalds, to making bubbling hot chicken at KFC, to dealing with hordes of unmarried fat chicks at Mervyns to God knows what else, I never told my parents to split my pay checks, or that any of them belonged to me; I simply signed off the checks and gave them to my parents. My brother, in contrast; well, he worked as a pharm intern for about a month during winter break, in which he kept a majority of his paychecks so that he could buy a new TV for himself.

Sometimes, my parents tell me to be more like my brother. I laugh inwardly at them, never speaking of the above thoughts to them. Oh, if only they knew!

Good sons should be getting Oscars every year.