Meet the parents

My relationship with my parents has morphed dramatically since I left home four years ago. Maybe we've all gotten a little crazier. The hardest thing about moving to college was leaving a crazy, loving home and moving onto a campus filled with lots of "normal" people. My relationship with my parents has taught me that we all experience mini-crises in which we need a grounded support group to give us familiarity and companionship, even if they are a little insane. \nMy dad is a big man. He is 6 feet 8 inches, 320 pounds and is notorious in my neighborhood for shoveling our icy driveway while wearing only shorts, sandals and a hooded "FUBU" sweatshirt. This is the man who made me run in front of the car when I was a boy because he thought I was getting lazy, who went with me to the "Big & Tall" store to try on 10X shirts and laugh, and purposely breaks wind in crowded elevators. \nMy mom is equally eccentric. We live in northern Indiana, but she accidentally drove to Iowa when she wanted to visit her friend in Kentucky. She is 54 years old but simultaneously wears purple and green contacts, glitter and pants that say "Bootylicious." She's a fireball, too. When I was telling her about my first date in college she interrupted me and asked simply, "So, did you score?!"\nBette Davis once said, "If you've never been hated by your child, you have never been a parent." My mom locks her keys in the car -- she accidentally locked me in the car with the keys when I was just a toddler. When I was 13 years old she locked them in the car while it was running in the middle of a Sunday snowstorm. She returned from the garage with my dad's golf club and proceeded to swing at our Mitsubishi until she shattered a window and unlocked the car. But we got to church on time. \nMy dad, too, has problems with motorized objects. He has a riding mower, which he refuses to drive on any level except "lightspeed" and should be entered into NASCAR. He tipped the tractor over in June and was only inches from becoming a lefty. He won't stop for the swing set in the backyard either; he just pushes the swings forward and hurls the tractor underneath. This is a quick method, but it leaves the possibility open for strangulation if you don't get out of the way. He's almost hanged himself twice executing this maneuver. \nCollege was a terrifying prospect for me. Freshman year, my girlfriend of two years dropped me like a hot plate two weeks into school, I couldn't decide on a major and I lived on a floor with wrestlers whose favorite pastime was wiping wads of old chewing tobacco on the hallway walls. But my parents were always there for me. They were my best friends, whether it was for talking or crying. No matter what disagreements I had with them upon coming to school, they evaporated in the months we were apart. Just like friendships, burying the past with your family and trying to mold new relationships is no easy task but its possible, and absolutely necessary.\nNobel laureate William Faulkner wrote about his Mammy, Caroline Barr, that she gave to his family "fidelity without stint or calculation of recompense and to my childhood an immeasurable devotion and love." Yeah, my parents are loonier than rats in a tin outhouse and I harbored resentment towards them that corroded our relationship for years. But since college I have come to understand so much about my relationship with them and have come to respect and admire them for the sacrifices, fidelity and devotion that they have brought to my life in the times of greatest distress.