Life with unreasonably strict parents is a life like no other. There is a never-ending flow of questions: Where are you going? What are you doing? Who is going to be there? Are there going to be parents present? I want to talk to them. When will you be home? In addition to the slew of questions, you end up having a life with a lack of privacy and a life out of your own control. Here are a few struggles that anyone with really strict parents will undoubtedly relate to.
1. You had to choose which nights you wanted to make plans.
This means deciding if you want to ask to go out on a Friday night or a Saturday night because you already knew there was no way you’d be allowed to do both.
2. Even if for some reason your parents said yes, it still wasn’t over.
“I need a list of who is going to be there, the address, their mom’s name and her phone number.”
3. You were always the first person who had to go home when everyone was hanging out together.
The 11 p.m. curfew was real and enforced.
4. Asking to sleep over at a friend’s house brought on a whole new realm of precise planning.
Not only did it take 24 hours of mental preparation, but also a PowerPoint listing a detailed family tree of everyone who would be in attendance and a signed contract promising you’d be on your best behavior.
5. Making plans for that evening was never an option for you.
Your parents required a minimum of two business days to decide if you were allowed to go out or not.
6. The pure preposterous panic that (too) frequently overcame you when your moronic friends continued to change the plans 20 times.
This left you with the less than desirable role of re-explaining to your parents what was actually happening. And it never failed to raise their suspicions to monumental heights.
7. You never got “the talk.”
There was never any need for this, considering you weren’t allowed to have a boyfriend until you were 25 anyway.
8. There is an actual art to asking your parents for permission.
Qualification 1: Have you practiced asking permission in the mirror and prepared answers to all the questions you think they will ask? Check.
Qualification 2: Are they in a good mood? No? Abort mission. I repeat, ABORT.
9. To this day you still make your bed every morning.
It was never an option when you were living under your parent’s roof. Going to your friends’ houses and seeing messy rooms was like a whole new world for you.
10. It’s impossible to get dressed without thinking about whether or not you’d be able to walk out of the house in it at home.
The high school years were a constant battle of whether or not your skirt/shorts were too short or if your graphic T-shirt was too suggestive.
11. Trying to ask a second time, throwing a tantrum or guilt-tripping them was just an utter waste of time.
It was like trying to talk to a brick wall — a very unreasonable, unsympathetic brick wall.
12. Your personal definition of rebellion sounded something like wearing flip-flops to school or staying out past curfew.
It really was a very sheltered lifestyle.
13. The only appropriate reaction to hearing that your friends had sleepovers with their significant others was just complete shock and disbelief.
“Wait, so he like, slept at your house? And your parents knew?!?!”
14. Telling a funny story almost always somehow turned into a 45-minute lecture.
You guys have different ideas of what constitutes humor.
15. Your life was controlled by a strict set of guidelines known as manners.
“Why isn’t your napkin in your lap? Do you do this at other people’s houses? I don’t want them thinking you were raised by barbarians.”
16. You never even thought about cussing until college.
Heck, your mom wouldn’t even allow you to say ‘hate’ because she thought it was too harsh of a word. The concept of actually using explicative phrases was a foreign language to you.
17. Your body wasn’t actually your body.
Even so much as thinking about dying your hair an unusual color, getting a tattoo or even a second piercing would be equivalent to WWIII or hell freezing over.
18. You had to pretend like you were still sheltered.
Whenever your parents walked into the room, you had to immediately change the television channel if there was even a slight risk that the movie characters would kiss, or even worse, have sexual relations.
19. You were all on your own.
Your friends could never wrap their free-spirited, unregulated heads around the concept that what your parent’s said was indeed the law.
20. Lack of communication was the ultimate sin.
If you managed to miss a single phone call or not respond to a text message within exactly 2.5 minutes of receiving it, you might as well have just ended your life there on the spot.
Although you lived a lifestyle that was a lot more strenuous than those of your peers, you are (semi) grateful that your parents raised you to be a responsible, well-mannered, cautious adult… and a phenomenal liar.