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My day got totally sidetracked by a phone call from the 'rents. I'd made the mistake of telling my dad that I hurt my back last week, and my mom has been calling two or three times a day to offer aid and comfort, always suggesting how much easier things would be for me if I just moved back in with them.
After a while, I just stopped answering her phone calls, which led to the inevitable tears (tangent: Rush lyrics: "What would touch you deeper? Tears that fall from eyes that only cry / Would it touch you deeper than / Tears that fall from eyes that are white"), another piece of emotional blackmail demanding that I answer the phone.
I lost all grip and rather unkindly suggested that my mom needed to find something to do with her time than worring about me every time I stubbed my toe. I explained to her that I avoided her calls because our conversations are always entirely about what I'm doing, whether I've decided to be a Good Little Indian Boy yet, and why I haven't made my first million yet.
Maybe, I suggested, We could try talking about you for a change?
So my mom told me all about my cousins, who was getting married to who, who was making how much, stories about "kids my age" who had already made millions of dollars.
( Read more... )
Later, my dad gets on the phone and asks me if I've ever considered learning Chinese, because he just heard about this guy who made $20 million in one trip to China buying knock-off purses. "I just thought, since you want to go to Hong Kong, maybe you'd be interested in starting something like that."
Okay, first off, I want to go to HK to check out the Haunted House that my friends are being flown overseas to build. I want to go to an amusement park, not China. Second, do you understand that those purses probably cost so little because they were made by 10-year-old slave labor?
"Bah," my father tells me, "China doesn't have any child labor camps, not for years now."
Okay, seriously. Last year, some estimates put the number at somewhere around 10 million children under 16 working in factories. I was so upset at this display of willful ignorance that I've spent the rest of the afternoon looking up child labor statistics and emailing them to Dad.
Of course, as usual with phone calls from my parents, this has simultaneously distracted me from the pursuit of my goals (My goals, dammit. My dreams.) for the entire day, and also made me feel completely worthless because I never went to medical school.
After a while, I just stopped answering her phone calls, which led to the inevitable tears (tangent: Rush lyrics: "What would touch you deeper? Tears that fall from eyes that only cry / Would it touch you deeper than / Tears that fall from eyes that are white"), another piece of emotional blackmail demanding that I answer the phone.
I lost all grip and rather unkindly suggested that my mom needed to find something to do with her time than worring about me every time I stubbed my toe. I explained to her that I avoided her calls because our conversations are always entirely about what I'm doing, whether I've decided to be a Good Little Indian Boy yet, and why I haven't made my first million yet.
Maybe, I suggested, We could try talking about you for a change?
So my mom told me all about my cousins, who was getting married to who, who was making how much, stories about "kids my age" who had already made millions of dollars.
( Read more... )
Later, my dad gets on the phone and asks me if I've ever considered learning Chinese, because he just heard about this guy who made $20 million in one trip to China buying knock-off purses. "I just thought, since you want to go to Hong Kong, maybe you'd be interested in starting something like that."
Okay, first off, I want to go to HK to check out the Haunted House that my friends are being flown overseas to build. I want to go to an amusement park, not China. Second, do you understand that those purses probably cost so little because they were made by 10-year-old slave labor?
"Bah," my father tells me, "China doesn't have any child labor camps, not for years now."
Okay, seriously. Last year, some estimates put the number at somewhere around 10 million children under 16 working in factories. I was so upset at this display of willful ignorance that I've spent the rest of the afternoon looking up child labor statistics and emailing them to Dad.
Of course, as usual with phone calls from my parents, this has simultaneously distracted me from the pursuit of my goals (My goals, dammit. My dreams.) for the entire day, and also made me feel completely worthless because I never went to medical school.