You're
back home for the summer. Your work and toil has ended, for the moment
at least, and in the ensuing blowout your already meagre student loan
has completely dried up, and the whithered apple core that remains
resembles Faye Dunaway holidaying in the tropics. And so you have made
the pilgrimage back home. And yet, somehow it always feels like a
retreat.
You are back in your old room,
which you find decorated with some old nick-knacks, a bunch of outdated
music posters and a few candid snaps of you when you were about
thirteen. You have run home to Mom and Pop. You have your clothes and
sheets washed, folded and even ironed (Ha, remember that?). Your
meals are no longer scrappy pasta dishes hastily cooked up in a select
few pots and pans , that all come coated in grease and bean juice slime.
No, now you get veritable meals, that you don't even have to
cook. The fridge is stocked with cans of the soft drink you like; for me
it's coke, like actual coke and not the sainsburys crap. And I can have
as much as it as I like as my parents have found in their middle age
that carbonated drinks disagree with them. Sure you have to walk the now
waddling old dog and push a hoover and broom around every so often but
hey, this is great, sort of like a day pass prison. Two hots and a cot.
That's swell right?
Well sort of. But after a
week or so, you being at home loses it's maverick status and clearly
starts to grind the gears of your dear parents. Your persistence in
waking in the late afternoon and wandering about in a dressing gown till
five o'clock clearly irks your dad, who, working from home, eyes you
with a steely gaze as you wander to and fro, as he takes work calls at
the dining table. Furthermore it all becomes very obvious you aren't
employed, and this isn't acceptable either, since it's basically
equatable to being a member of the KKK. You drink up with glee all the
free soft drinks that were picked on the basis that you like that brand,
but this is seen by your providers, as a flagrant abuse of process,
and clearly shows that you are a sweet-toothed mooching sonofabitch. You
eat the free meals but then prove ineffective in suggesting new ones,
much to your mother's consternation. And you know, deep down, your
parents are sort of wishing you would just leave already.
But it isn't just you
who proves to be a colossal irritant to your 'rents, but the reverse is
soon proven to be very much true as well. You see, since you and your
sis moved away your parents have been alone together for extended
periods for the first time in more than twenty years. And as they move
gradually forward, blinking and rubbing their eyes in the blinding
reality of their semi isolation , they have devolved to form a series of
eccentricities in your wake. To start with, the pillow population has
exploded, leading to the manic, impractical, otherworldly setup wherein
each sofa has a whopping four pillows propped up on it. And so with
disdain you toss the tastefully placed rectangles of yellow and green to
the seat in the bay, where no one ever sits apart from when its crammed
at Christmas. Upon witnessing this your mum springs forth like a
particularly zealous gazelle and slips you the immortal line 'Leave them
love, those are the DISPLAY PILLOWS (emphasis added)'. And its at this
point you realise your childhood home has been utterly bastardised in
your absence; there are new, freaky routines to learn, and boy are they
maddening.
The bathroom in particular, due
to it's communal nature, is a hotbed for this sort of interchange. It's
like the Gaza strip of petty parent-child squabbling. For a start, your
father has an obsession with wiping down the surfaces after a shower,
which surely borders dangerously on fetishism. I mean it's sort of
common to maybe wipe down the screen, or the door if it's a walk-in. But
no, this is not acceptable. We are talking the walls, even the ones on
the other end of the room, as well as the dials, the taps, the
shelves, the border of the bath, the mirror, and possibly even the rim
of the sink. If you fail to deal with any of these articles, you can
expect a disdainful call from your father; 'The walls are running'.
Of course to this you reply with 'Oh really, you better catch them
then', like the cutting genius of wit that you are. God, you are such a
catch. But that's not all. Your mother has a habit, nay, a routine (as
it's a daily occurrence, way beyond the whimsical) of popping down the
lid of the loo and doing her make up whilst sat on the toilet lid, using
a little make-up mirror propped on the window ledge behind the cistern.
This means whenever you go take a leak, the mirror is so placed that
you wind up staring at a fun-house mirror image of your own junk, and no
matter how often you move the mirror, every day you will find it in the
same place, at the same angle, as this is presumably the exact height
at which your mother's head reaches. So everyday you get this terrifying
spectacle in the morning; like staring at your dong as it floats about
hazily in some other dimension. It's sort of like having a video-call
except its with your own penis and its calling from a particularly
distant Stargate.
But living at home is
downright dangerous. You suddenly remember all these creature comforts
you took for granted when you were a bratty little kid; cooked meals,
made beds, chilled beverages, and think, 'Hey, I don't want leave this.'
And so, there is a good chance you won't. You risk slipping into a sort
of vegetative state, whereby you do nothing creative, mooch off of your
parents and generally become a bit of a dosser. It is very attractive
after all. You seldom have to go out, can sit in your pants and smell
like sweat and mountain dew till the cows come home, all the while
clocking up hours on that video game that you really need to pump
endless hours into again. If you are anyway near as sociopathic as I am,
then this will appeal. But this is not good. Because you have most
likely already done this sort of thing, its hardly fresh or new or
exciting, nor does it pay. And boy, do you need a summer job, especially
after the afore mentioned blowout after exams.
So
home is problematic for several reasons; you annoy your elders, who in
turn annoy you, and as a result of the comforts available to you either
way, you risk squandering time by sitting about and dribbling at a
screen for days at a time. So be careful. Of course with all
seriousness, going home should be really nice, and be honest, you love
your dear old parents and you have missed them whilst off being all
independent. Furthermore its good to have some normalcy after the sweat
and vomit soaked roller coaster of your other life, and you can take a
little time to take your foot off the gas, enjoy some hospitality, and
maybe practice a little domestic diplomacy. Just catch yourself if you
find yourself dipping into that rut, even if it is all expenses paid.
Should you find yourself staring glassy eyed at a TV screen, then pick
yourself up and go do something else. And for the love of god wash that
vest. It's been weeks and while I appreciate you don't have anyone to
impress, there are some times when you should just be appalled at
yourself, and this is one of those times. You smell like feet wrapped in old kippers.
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