Randomly pondering ways my parents embarrassed me in childhood as you do, and remembering the time we made cupcakes in HE and were sent home with a list of ingredients including food colouring for the icing.
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@EvilCartyen I mean based on the fairly solid evidence of the survival of my peers, I'm pretty sure the occasional pink cupcake or sweet wouldn't have killed me. But I did spend part of my childhood in Germany and Belgium, and the difference between the food served in schools in Continental Europe with actual fruit and vegetables in and the slop we got in the UK was wild.
@EvilCartyen Home Economics was a bit of a joke too, it was supposed to be about teaching us how to cook in case our parents hadn't and I thoroughly support that idea and think schools should still do it. But because we weren't allowed to use knives that meant that all we actually learned was how to make a variety of cakes or pies with prepared fillings, rather than learning how to cook any actual meals
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@EvilCartyen Home Economics was a bit of a joke too, it was supposed to be about teaching us how to cook in case our parents hadn't and I thoroughly support that idea and think schools should still do it. But because we weren't allowed to use knives that meant that all we actually learned was how to make a variety of cakes or pies with prepared fillings, rather than learning how to cook any actual meals
@afewbugs We cooked meals and used knives, shitty dull knives but none the less. Then we ate together.
It was a team thing, one team cooked carbs, one team did meat & veggies or whatever, and one team did dessert. It was pretty good, I loved it.
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@afewbugs Sounds traumatic but also correct on your mum.
When I was around 11, I spent a few weeks in an English middle school during my summer holiday (yes, really), and the trash you give kids to eat in the UK...
@EvilCartyen @afewbugs I don't know if Jules's Mum was as relentlessly Like That as mine, but I can absolutely tell you that the health damage from being constantly othered from ones peers is worse than all the sugar, food coloring, plastic, polyester, movies and TV shows that it saved me from.
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@EvilCartyen @afewbugs I don't know if Jules's Mum was as relentlessly Like That as mine, but I can absolutely tell you that the health damage from being constantly othered from ones peers is worse than all the sugar, food coloring, plastic, polyester, movies and TV shows that it saved me from.
There's that, of course. I was very good at othering myself, so no parental assistance needed in my case
Didn't mean to neglect how traumatic it probably was, sorry about that.
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@EvilCartyen @afewbugs I don't know if Jules's Mum was as relentlessly Like That as mine, but I can absolutely tell you that the health damage from being constantly othered from ones peers is worse than all the sugar, food coloring, plastic, polyester, movies and TV shows that it saved me from.
@lydiafacts @EvilCartyen it sounds like we had very similar mothers. I also had to throw away my packed lunches more than once because they were full of broken glass, because she didn't believe in plastic food containers so sent me to school with juice in glass bottles
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@lydiafacts @EvilCartyen it sounds like we had very similar mothers. I also had to throw away my packed lunches more than once because they were full of broken glass, because she didn't believe in plastic food containers so sent me to school with juice in glass bottles
@lydiafacts @EvilCartyen I also have The Garlic Story https://social.coop/@afewbugs/115337140711152908
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@lydiafacts @EvilCartyen I also have The Garlic Story https://social.coop/@afewbugs/115337140711152908
Ah, the horrors of PE changing rooms. These days I presume most people are too worried about their own shit to notice someone else's feet, but back then it was agony.
Fun fact: In Denmark, kids must shower after PE. Usually in big communal showers. Didn't like it as a kid, but from an adult perspective I don't mind it, it lets kids see that we're not so different from each other under our clothes. I realize this sounds insane to many non-Scandinavians...
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Ah, the horrors of PE changing rooms. These days I presume most people are too worried about their own shit to notice someone else's feet, but back then it was agony.
Fun fact: In Denmark, kids must shower after PE. Usually in big communal showers. Didn't like it as a kid, but from an adult perspective I don't mind it, it lets kids see that we're not so different from each other under our clothes. I realize this sounds insane to many non-Scandinavians...
@EvilCartyen @lydiafacts swimming pools in Belgium were the same, I genuinely think having seen a variety of bodies in changing rooms growing is up why I have far fewer bodily hangups than most British women my age seem to
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@EvilCartyen @lydiafacts swimming pools in Belgium were the same, I genuinely think having seen a variety of bodies in changing rooms growing is up why I have far fewer bodily hangups than most British women my age seem to
Exactly, and it's the same thing when you go to a spa or communal swimming pool, you see people of all ages, sizes, backgrounds naked - and it's actually pretty liberating.
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@lydiafacts @EvilCartyen it sounds like we had very similar mothers. I also had to throw away my packed lunches more than once because they were full of broken glass, because she didn't believe in plastic food containers so sent me to school with juice in glass bottles
@afewbugs @lydiafacts @EvilCartyen Hah, me too!
My single mum was very convinced of the evils of both sugar and television.
So I could never participate in the conversations about what was on TV last night - this was before the internet, so everyone had been watching the same thing, except me.
Outside the house, I would ravenously hoover up all the sweets that I could lay my hands on.
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@afewbugs @lydiafacts @EvilCartyen Hah, me too!
My single mum was very convinced of the evils of both sugar and television.
So I could never participate in the conversations about what was on TV last night - this was before the internet, so everyone had been watching the same thing, except me.
Outside the house, I would ravenously hoover up all the sweets that I could lay my hands on.
@afewbugs @lydiafacts @EvilCartyen just in case anyone is wondering why I’m Like That
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@afewbugs @lydiafacts @EvilCartyen Hah, me too!
My single mum was very convinced of the evils of both sugar and television.
So I could never participate in the conversations about what was on TV last night - this was before the internet, so everyone had been watching the same thing, except me.
Outside the house, I would ravenously hoover up all the sweets that I could lay my hands on.
@slothrop @lydiafacts @EvilCartyen I used to use I Was In Belgium a lot as an excuse for not having seen things on TV, but unfortunately that had a finite useful lifespan before people started pointing out I Was No Longer In Belgium
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@afewbugs @lydiafacts @EvilCartyen just in case anyone is wondering why I’m Like That
@afewbugs @lydiafacts @EvilCartyen I mean, she raised me well and gave me a loving home, and I'm deeply grateful for that.
Her education eventually led me to becoming more or less comfortable with doing my own thing apart from the crowd, which is healthy and valuable.
But it was also sort of traumatic in lots of different ways, and she could definitely have made some things easier for me.
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@afewbugs @lydiafacts @EvilCartyen I mean, she raised me well and gave me a loving home, and I'm deeply grateful for that.
Her education eventually led me to becoming more or less comfortable with doing my own thing apart from the crowd, which is healthy and valuable.
But it was also sort of traumatic in lots of different ways, and she could definitely have made some things easier for me.
@slothrop @lydiafacts @EvilCartyen it's difficult isn't it because while I don't think that anything that happened to me meets the level of childhood trauma, a lot of things would have been easier for me and I'd have had a lot less to unpack in therapy if some things that made me very different from those around me hadn't been enforced. And it's hard to reconcile that with the fact that my parents are genuinely lovely people who had the best of intentions - like I think we
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@slothrop @lydiafacts @EvilCartyen it's difficult isn't it because while I don't think that anything that happened to me meets the level of childhood trauma, a lot of things would have been easier for me and I'd have had a lot less to unpack in therapy if some things that made me very different from those around me hadn't been enforced. And it's hard to reconcile that with the fact that my parents are genuinely lovely people who had the best of intentions - like I think we
@afewbugs @lydiafacts @EvilCartyen Yeah, this.
And it's kind of hereditary. I'm constantly trying to calibrate just how much weirdness I'm inflicting on my own kids...
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@afewbugs @lydiafacts @EvilCartyen Yeah, this.
And it's kind of hereditary. I'm constantly trying to calibrate just how much weirdness I'm inflicting on my own kids...
@slothrop @lydiafacts @EvilCartyen I've dodged confronting that issue by not having them, and feel a bit of a coward for it. But I'm so impressed by how much work my brother has done to figure out how to parent in a healthy way
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@slothrop @lydiafacts @EvilCartyen I've dodged confronting that issue by not having them, and feel a bit of a coward for it. But I'm so impressed by how much work my brother has done to figure out how to parent in a healthy way
@afewbugs @slothrop @lydiafacts
Like, I don't have these nigh-traumatic childhood events beyond feeling like an outsider due to not liking tractors or whatever, so I don't have a lot of heriditary weirdness to try to not inflect on someone.
Which, I suppose, is testament to how good of a job my parents and grandparents did, hearing about their childhoods.
Doesn't mean I am not second guessing myself constantly in an effort not to saddle my kids with issues which could have been prevented. I think it's just how parenting feels.
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@slothrop @lydiafacts @EvilCartyen I used to use I Was In Belgium a lot as an excuse for not having seen things on TV, but unfortunately that had a finite useful lifespan before people started pointing out I Was No Longer In Belgium
@afewbugs @slothrop @lydiafacts
These days I just tell people I don't want to watch brainrot like that and that they should get better interests. I work in IT, so most people in my department agree, and we generally don't engage with the normies
