Parental Advisory

When I was fifteen, I saw an alarming news story. You might be familiar with the sort: footage of children gaping at a screen; "Video gaming--some experts call it an epidemic," the narrator warns over a clip of a talking head; "Are your kids addicted to video games? XYZ News investigates."

After the segment, I turned to my father and asked his opinion on the matter. Although we did not own any game consoles, he knew I played strategy games on our PC.

"Well," he said, "you can't take this stuff too seriously. When I was a boy, they thought comic books would rot out our brains. Then it was Rock n' Roll music, then television shows, et cetera. Since my brain seems pretty much in tact, I reckon you don't need to worry about those games."

He took a sip of his beer and narrowed his eyes at me. "If you start playing too much, though, your ass is grass and I'm the lawnmower."

Then we ate dinner and I played Outpost while my parents watched NYPD Blue or whatever. My father never needed carry out his threats, save once (see End of the Beginning). I did not realize my tremendous fortune.

About a year after that, I discovered Dungeons & Dragons. My parents had no opinion about the game itself, but seemed faintly relieved that I had finally started making friends outside of clubs and sports. One of my first players (half-elven Fighter/Mage) sheepishly asked us not to tell his mother what we were doing. Since she forbade him to play D&D, he had to pass our game sessions off as 'watching movies'.

I was bewildered. Why would a parent object to imaginative and cooperative play? Apparently, the poor woman had gotten it in her head that roleplaying games caused suicide, and could not be persuaded otherwise. ("Has Dungeons & Dragons brainwashed your child? Details at seven.")

Some years later, I sat in a dimly lit dormitory common room, meeting my partner's Roman Catholic mother for the first time. She was making awkward small talk, and I struggled to reciprocate.

"So, how did you two meet?" she asked.

"We played in the same Dungeons & Dragons campaign," I replied, thinking myself clever for omitting that it had been a game run by my ex, or that my partner had played a Cleric of Kord.

"Dungeons & Dragons? Isn't that the thing that makes kids kill themselves?!" she cried. ("Stay tuned to Channel 0 News to find out!")

I shot my partner an incredulous look. He just slumped down in his chair and groaned. We spent the next half hour reassuring his mother we were not in a cult, worshipping demons, or contemplating suicide. It has set the tone of my relationship with her ever since.

I also started appreciating my own parents' laissez-faire style. True, they were frequently absent in my childhood. They never attended any of my games--not when I co-captained my varsity soccer team, and not when my quiz bowl team went to the nationals. They expected much and praised little. However, they did for the most part trust me, not just to tell the truth, but to make my own decisions (again, excepting the incident in End of the Beginning).

Whenever I hear about how 'helicopter parenting' has ruined my generation ("XYZ News correspondent Chick N. Little reports her findings."), I wonder whether my parents avoided that trap by design or happenstance. Did they refrain from micromanagement to make me stronger? Or did some combination of my personality and circumstances render their negligence harmless? Either way, I am grateful, and studiously avoid television news. It will rot your brains out.

Playing Chicken

People often ask why I do not eat meat. I can never think of a concise answer, because I have many reasons, not all of them easy to explain.  Often I just give the one that will satisfy the most people, even though it explains the least: I refrain from taking life as part of my practice of Buddhism.

It started in the fall of my sixteenth year, when my mother found an excellent deal on chicken leg quarters at the IGA supermarket. Growing up impoverished in the Taiwanese south had given her a strong frugal streak, so she bought enough chicken to fill up the entire freezer.

As my mother hated cooking, she worked out an ingenious scheme for expediting weeknight supper. Each weekend, she would broil as many chicken leg quarters as would fit in the oven, dice them up, and keep them in the refrigerator, ready for use.

I did not--and do not--begrudge my mother for saving money or time. After a month of bland, chewy broiled chicken, however, I was ready to snap. Raised in Chinese fashion, I harbored no notion of asking my mother to vary the menu. So I started making ramen for myself when I got home from school, arguing that I was too hungry to wait, then skipping dinner to study (and/or play MUDs).

Once soccer season arrived, though, I regularly made it home later than my parents and could no longer use hunger as an excuse to make my own meals. So I came up with a reason that I thought would pass the filial piety test: vegetarianism.

It did not impress my parents.

My mother, perhaps more perceptive than I gave her credit, insisted that I hated her cooking. There was no fighting her on that one. My father calmly explained that I could not possibly get enough protein to survive his PT regimen and varsity soccer without eating meat. I, with the stubbornness I inherited from him and perhaps a bit of teenage defiance, insisted that I most certainly could.

I did some research on nutrition and presented it to my father. He remained unconvinced. I kept a journal of what I ate for several days, demonstrating that I got plenty of protein. This annoyed him, but he knew too much biology to argue that protein from meat was qualitatively different from the protein in other foods. Reluctantly, he allowed me to continue, convinced that I would grow out of the phase soon enough.

Ironically, I might not have stuck to vegetarianism if my father had just let it alone from the start. The fact that I fought him (amicably) over the issue and won meant a lot to me, and thereafter my diet represented one of the few areas I controlled in my highly regimented life.

As the years passed, I often considered eating meat again--and at times have done so in limited capacities. I have a strong aversion to habits that do not serve any purpose, and make regular audits of my habits in order to eliminate or change unnecessary ones. My vegetarianism has survived several such audits, emerging at last with renewed conviction.

End of the Beginning

To the best of my knowledge, I have only disappointed my father once.

It had seemed like the end of the world. Perhaps so, in that it ended one epoch of my life--one I do not like to think about often anymore. Like it or not, though, I owe my cherished present to that unpleasant past.

In the winter of my senior year in high school, I withdrew my application to the Naval Academy, for which I had prepared the three years previous. My father has an Irish temper, and usually it flares bright and brief. That event, however, infuriated him to such an extent that I could not talk to him for nearly a month.

It probably did not help that my eldest brother had done something very similar years ago.  He had changed his mind about attending West Point at the last minute, went to a liberal arts college for a short while, then hared off to some Ashram in California.

Dad attributed my change of heart to 'nerves', cowardice, the liberal media's brainwashing, and pretty much everything except for the reasoned decision I thought I had made. Neither he nor my mother would accept my choice, and kept waiting for me to 'get over it'

I heard them talking in the living room at night about how I would never make it in civilian life. They thought me too intellectual and too sensitive to brave the world without the structure of the military to prop me up and give me direction.

At the time, I believed them.

Like my brother, I did find my own way to higher education. Unlike my brother, I did not drop out to join a commune, but our life experiences still have their parallels. Academic scholarships made moot my parents' reluctance to foot the bill, and I never returned home again except for short, uncomfortable visits.

Though I kept in touch with my parents by email and by telephone, we rarely had much to discuss. They no longer brought up military service, or other unsolicited advice that they knew I would ignore. Nevertheless, it seemed plain to me that they did not particularly approve of my life choices. I could live with that.

A couple of months ago, I called my father to wish him a happy birthday. We talked about the weather and our workout routines, and about my mother, as usual.

Then, he dropped this bomb: "I don't think I say this often, but I'm proud of you. You may not have done things the way I would have, but you've done good, and I love you."

To put things in perspective, I do not come from a warm and demonstrative family. By "I don't think I say this often", my father actually meant he had never said it before--at least not to me.

So I gaped for a moment, wondering who had kidnapped Major Farrington, USMC (Ret.) and replaced him with this understanding, modern dad. No, it defied the bounds of belief to imagine someone breaking into the home of my aging but freakishly in-shape ex-military parents and leaving with anything other than injuries.

"I love you, too, Dad," I replied at last. "You're my hero, and the best father a son could have."

Even typing that now kind of makes me cringe, but I meant it. Before we hung up, he added that, in retrospect, he believed I had made the right choice in not attending the Naval Academy, and he respected me for holding my ground against him.

It felt like some strange, belated rite of passage: a blessing from the man whose opinion I had valued above all others for the better part of my life. Sure, I did not any longer wait on his approval like the child his anger once devastated, but in a way that made it easier for me to appreciate the gesture.

Entering military service, in and of itself, would not have made me like my father as I once hoped it would. Becoming my own man, honoring my word, respecting others, and taking responsibility for my actions--these things make me my father's son.

And I did not even have to join the Navy to do it.