It’s back from the dead! The TB Mega Thread.

[goroth]

This thread is fucking rad. You guys who've written stuff about dads and families and stuff have all written really honestly and interestingly. Tempted to put the thumbs up smiley there (because I overuse those things like nobody's business) but it would destroy my epic feeling of respect right now. Nice one duders.

[behndy]

i got lucky enough that while my bio-dad is.... maybe not a douchey piece of shit, but is NOT father material. good spermy based genes though. but he bones out when i was about 4. occasional contact, more a Cool Friend That Had Money To Do Stuff Than A Father, then he flaked on a meet up when i was like 12 or so... havna seen him since. but truly doesn't matter, because my mom was around then married to my real father, he's been in my life since i was born and raised me. him and my mom are responsible for anything good in me.

DAMNIT. NO ONE FROM MY FAMILY TOUCHED MY WRONGLY WHEN I WAS LITTLE. I DON'T HAVE THAT EXCUSE.

i MIGHT have been molested. there was a guy my bio-donor guy rented from that it turned out he was fucking his 7 year old daughter. but if he did, i don't really remember it. so no big.

....... has nothing to do with my slightly aberrant (i prefer the term Open MINDED) sexual predilictions. realz.

[Achtane]

My mom was the present parent. She was very loving,...but overprotective to a fault. I don't have any great adventures to speak of from my childhood. No close calls,...no broken bones,...no damage (which in retrospect I consider damage in and of itself,...if you aren't damaged,...you're not doing it right). I spent my teenage years locked away in my room (on my own accord) playing my bass and my guitar. I slept a lot. No one ever expressed concern that that was what I chose to do. Instead of going out and getting into trouble. I guess that was a relief for my folks after the shit show that was my brother.

It literally took me to the age of 33 (which I turned in April) to feel any sort of damage that is beyond angsty loneliness high school bullshit. Damage that woke me up and shook me out of complacency. Damage that remade me and gave me passion.

Man, it's been a while since I've seen a post I could relate with so much.
I need to go out and do stupid shit and experience good things and experience things that will smash me. That's the ultimate goal. I've been in this lame reclusive purgatory for waaaaaaaay too long.
Pissing away my youth is unforgivably stupid.

[MSUsousaphone]

Whelp. It's almost Monday. The first of the quints, Owen, gets released from the hospital on Monday.

[behndy]

YAY!!

[Chankgeez]

YAY!!

Yep, yay. Good luck, now the real work begins.

[theavondon]

I love my mom. She's always been there for me, has the same sense of humor that I do, and has always tried to maintain a stable, loving home environment. Now that I'm out on my own, I realize more and more every day the amazing things she did for me. And, I love just hanging out with her now. I used to come home from shows late at night and find my mom asleep on the couch watching adult swim. I'd wake her up and she'd usually say "Oh, hey. Oh, sweet, Boondocks is on." and just stay up watching it with me at 3 AM.

[nad]

Deep post.

So I'll wonder aloud how brilliant it is behnders is busking by an ATM.

"Yeah, yeah, you don't have any money... riiiight."

hahaha awesome summary of some awesome photos.

My mom rules for more reasons than I could ever discuss, and I try to remind her of his because I'm extremely thankful for all she has done over the years. My dad and I started getting along once I hit my 30s, and it's never going to be perfect, but at least it's pretty decent these days, the previous three decades considered.

Wife and I don't have kids (I'm 33, she's 37). It's discussed on occasion, but mostly neither one of us wants them. My parents want grandkids. Her mom doesn't, and her dad died a few years back (but I think he would have liked to have seen some). I do really want a dog, thankfully the wife is finally on board with that after spending time with my parents' two beasts over the years. As soon as we have a yard big enough...

Not sure if procreation is in the cards for us, but if we don't do it soon and later feel regret, I think we'll just adopt an African Child.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQqs-Cno5Bc

[goroth]

Whelp. It's almost Monday. The first of the quints, Owen, gets released from the hospital on Monday.

Owen!

[Deltaphoenix]

Yes Sir! Owen is going home, So AWESOME!

[warwick.hoy]

Yay Owen!!!

Man, it's been a while since I've seen a post I could relate with so much.
I need to go out and do stupid shit and experience good things and experience things that will smash me. That's the ultimate goal. I've been in this lame reclusive purgatory for waaaaaaaay too long.
Pissing away my youth is unforgivably stupid.

I reread my post and it comes off as whiny and emo. I make it seem like my family was dysfunctional and to a certain degree I feel like it was (the lack of dysfunction or the very least,...trying to hide that dysfunction). My folks were good parents and I had a nice stable home and a good upbringing. Just feels like complacency and satisfaction with the status quo was the general theme. Just feels like exposure to reality/the real world/harshness was minimal.

Either way my folks found a way to make it work even if it was a facade. I feel like I got the best qualities of both parents passed on to me, good work ethic, open mindedness, forgiveness, allowing people to be themselves, generosity, initiative. Some qualities I had to gain on my own. Honesty, communication, outgoingness, humility, passion. (most of these have come with the help of my wife).

I say that sacrifices weren't made,...but it's probably worth noting that my dad likely sacrificed his own happiness with the person he chose to marry and raise a family with for the betterment of said family. It must have been torture for him to watch one son turn out to be a ner'do'well (my brother) and another son do the bare minimum and focus his interest in a non lucrative hobby (music) rather than apply himself in his studies and try to make a better life than that of his parents. Dad likely suffered until the time came were he had a problem with being unhappy for 25 years. He eventually made a change to solve the problem and while I cannot fault that decision; I would have preferred that he had been more honest with himself and his family sooner.

FWIW,...I feel like I do have a better life than my parents as I haven't made the mistake of sacrificing my happiness for a career, or to live with a bad decision.

My parents constantly battled with my brother; he was thrown out of the house on numerous occasions until he finally cut the cord when I was 11 or 12 (my bro is 7 years older than I). He has been in and out of the various households for years. He wore out his welcome at my mom's house. He is currently wearing out his welcome in my house. He does minimal menial work and complains about no woman wanting to be with him,...but doesn't do anything to better his own life in a way that would make him attractive to the opposite sex. He ain't bringing no floozy into this house. He has nothing to offer.

I decided to use his example and stay out of trouble for the most part so as not to follow in his footsteps. So a lot of my seclusion was of my own accord. I just tend not like most people. It's cool to have fun and what not,...but for the most part,...my experience with people who just want to have fun is that they are seemingly high strung and those types of personalities are the ones I like to avoid; even to this day. That makes it hard for me to be social and makes it difficult for me to form relationships and friendships. I choose my circle of friends pretty cautiously. I like mellow and contented people. Folks who don't make drastic, destructive and illogical decisions.

I often wonder if I had had a more blatantly dysfunctional upbringing, would I be a more passionate, creative, social and outgoing person. Would I be more successful in the American Dream sense. Would I be more "secure" Would I have a job that offers higher pay so I can afford all the cool expensive musicians toys out there. A job that offers enough vacation time that I could take said musicians toys on a tour and still have a job to come back to when said tour is over?

I couldn't have been brought up any differently,...it is what it is and I embrace that.

[dubkitty]

i feel like i didn't give my folks enough credit...they really worked hard over the years to give my next oldest brother and i a decent environment. they moved to a house they didn't even like in the suburbs so Kurt and i could go to better schools, and my father had a heart attack when i was 16 which i'm convinced was brought on by how hard he worked over the preceding eight years. my view of life then is/was colored by the depression i've always been subject to and my alienation from the kids in the burbs, who i couldn't relate to at all. i am stunned at how hard the parents of my generation worked...my cousin's dad, Uncle Tony, also worked two jobs for an extended period, and he had SIX kids.

the thing i'm really grateful for is that my Mom and i became closer in her later years...we flew her out for my wedding to my second wife in 1989, and in the years before she had her strokes in the early 00s that rendered her unable to communicate we had long, long phone conversations and finally came to understand each other. i really wish my folks were still alive...i miss them terribly and wish i could call upon their wisdom and experience now that i'm chronologically all grown up and shit.

[dubkitty]

if my Dad were still alive he'd be 100 years old in a couple of weeks.

[My name is Mudd]

Some AMAZING stuff here, and thanks for it all!

It's kinda odd to me, hearing about y'all's parents, siblings, etc...I'm an only and my parents were together until my dad's cancer took him six years ago. Both were teachers @ high school & college lvls; mom taught (pre-computerized) business subjects, dad was a biologist. Both of them teaching meant that summers were different for us...dad was a seasonal ranger for the National Park Service, initially working back-country patrol in Sequoia/King's Canyon Nat'l Park. The ranger station was/still is aprox. 25 miles from the end of the road, and the only way in is either foot, horse (the NPS provided saddle and pack horses for him, and we rode in), or helicopter. Mom and I would be with him for about half the summer back there, starting when I was 4 yrs old. Three summers of that, but the 4th season he was stationed back in the very southern end of the park (Mineral King) which was a bit easier to get to, with it having a road and all (whoa...civilization!). My friends would ask me why I didn't join the Boys Scouts like most everyone else had...from my perspective, they were posers.

A few years of that, and dad went in a different direction, applying for/receiving grant monies from the for National Science Foundation to do marine biology research out of the Berkeley marine labs in the summer months (dad rented a mobile home a few blocks from the Berkeley campus for the summer). This meant that I was in the Bay Area in '68, '69 and '70...post-Summer Of Love, People's Park, Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters (I have vivid memories of seeing their bus, Furthur, numerous times), the Zodiac serial killer, the rise of the Black Panther movement, BART being built...the whole bit. Mom, a die-hard conservative, was a bit weirded out by it all...she was a Berkeley Business School grad and lived in San Francisco for a few years afterward, just after WWll. She kept saying that the whole place had gone to hell and what had "those weirdos" done to her school, but dad (who had an oddball sense of humor, and was basically apolitical) loved it. Three summers of that and then the grant funds dried up, dad stayed home summers, and life either returned to normal or got boring, depending on your perspective. But thanks to all that, I had experiences that most of my friends never even thought about. And I still didn't join Scouts.

[warwick.hoy]

I was in the Scouts. Aside from the Pinewood Derbies and the one camping trip I went on,...it was dumb. Bunch of suburban kids sitting around strange living rooms or churches; eating snax and learning how to tie square knots and be good obedient Americans is about what I remember from all that. Just added to the painful averageness of my upbringing.

The one constant in my growing up was music. Probably one of the few things that set me apart. I'm pretty sure I was never interested in fitting in.

I took piano lessons starting at the age of 5 and ending at the age of 14. I immediately switched to teaching myself how to play bass after I grew out of the Piano. I never made it much past an intermediate level on the piano. After 9 years a more apt student should have been more advanced. A lot of that was forced though. I never wanted to practice. I remember getting defiant with my teacher at one point. I had never gleaned anything other than copying what other people were doing. No creative aspect was ever nurtured. A piece of sheet music was placed in front of me. The song was played for me and I essentially mimicked the song from memory using the notation as a guideline to fix any discrepancies. I never had anyone to guide me through or formulate any actual process to compose and arrange. Lack of communication for those desires probably comes into play a little bit here.

That's not really anyone's fault other than mine and from a bassists aspect, that memorization and ability to play other people's songs aren't bad skills to have and I don't regret going about my introduction to music the way I did. Perhaps the creative aspect is not how my brain is wired. I've always looked up to the creative types,...but never seemed to have the damage that spurs the kind of creativity that appeals to me. Perhaps that's why the improvisation aspect always appealed to me. Having a creative thought is fleeting. Ideas come and go in an instant in my brain. It's only now that I have some sort of desire to be creative and feel like I have something to offer; enough so to be patient in my pursuit of more creative endeavors. To explore avenues of retaining the ideas.