My parents

A fictional story, part two

By Morgan Hannah, Life & Style Editor

Part One

Hands down, my parents prepared me for adulthood better than anyone else ever could. I learned to not talk back, to eat all my vegetables or I’d never be a grown-up, and that a bottle of wine makes the best gift for every occasion—including recovering alcoholic Aunt Agatha’s birthday—and if the lawnmower cuts off my toes, don’t come runnin’ to mama. I learned that I wasn’t born in a barn, I just lived like it—and that the Purple Death was not a plague, but rather an unusual rough-as-guts wine with the distinctive bouquet of horse shit and old train tickets… best drunk after you’re already drunk and with clenched teeth, so as to prevent the ingestion of foreign bodies.

My friends were always jealous that I didn’t have to go to church, because my parents could teach me everything I needed to know themselves. My lesson on receiving from my mother, “You’re gonna get it when we get home,” and communion with my father at the Bavaria Haus—we’d break bread, dip it in oil and vinegar, and partake of the blood of Christ that way. It tasted like old tea leaves and burnt cat hair, and left us singin’ “Je-e-esus Christ.”

Girl Guides were a breeze with my father’s help. He educated me on how to deliver the best sales pitch: “Dark as David Fincher, this beautiful fair-trade chocolate unwinds waves of hovercraft oil and notes of bramble, blackberry, boysenberry, Don Cherry, and Franken Berry from a mountaintop parcel of land in the coast. A brooding mistress of devilish wonder. Good with pork and pancakes, or as an evening treat, this chocolate bar will make you wonder what you’re doing with your life.”

Yes, growing up with my parents, I felt loved. I really did. They would always tell me the nicest things and make sure I knew just how lucky they felt to have a kid like me, like the time my mother said “one day you’ll have kids, and I hope they turn out just like you, then you’ll see what it’s like.”