When I was little, my parents liked to pretend that any non-sense I thought was coming from them was all in my imagination or I was just being unreasonable. But now that I'm older I think back about the "advice" or "suggestions" they used to give to minor problems and I realize that, Parents Really Are Pretty Crazy People--not in a bad way at all. I, like and maybe even unlike many of my fellow tempers, love my parents dearly and try to be a good kid, worry about their future etc, etc. but that doesn't mean that I have to agree with everything they say--especially when it was all folly spoken to make me go sit still and be quiet*

I've decided that it would be fun to make a small, online book--like a PDF book, Titled "Parents say the darnedest things" and have decided to start a minor online campaign to get people to submit short true/based on true experiences of their parents giving them nonsense advice. It can be as simple as

Me: Mom, my arm hurts.
Mom: You'll be okay if you go lie down and be still.

Or a short story, but I decided that I will launch the campaign here on my favorite web-hangout GBATEMP.NET.

I plan to carry this campaign as far as I can and make the book up this fall, if you want to then I'd be thrilled to have your stories submitted to my new email address--they can be signed with your name and location, or your username and the site that name is from, or not at all:

Parentssay@gmail.com.


*This seems to have been my moms favorite advice for any worldy discomfort short of burning alive or death itself.

If I was hungry still after dinner then, I needed to go lie down. When it was summer and 6 kids had to share one room with only a rickety rotating fan and we were hot, we needed to "Just lie down and be still." When my sister was being mean and I need parental backup, we were both "just tired" and told that we'd all feel better if we just went in the room and laid down quietly and were still for oh, roundabouts 30 minutes, .

Yeah, so you can all submit or not, hopefully you'll be seeing this around the web a bit as I plan to get at least 100 entries and will be campaigning online to get this off the ground.