The Terrible Things That My Parents Did To Me

~ Laura

I’m packing up and getting ready for today’s classes. We’ll be discussing Rousseau in my theory class.  I can’t say I’m looking forward to describing the general will. After Political Theory, we’re having "fun day" in Politics and Media. We’re going to watch All the President’s Men. As I’m waiting for the projector to warm up, I’ll tell them about the first time that I saw that movie.

I was 11 and my brother and sister were 8 and 9, when my parents dragged us to see this movie. We would have much preferred to see Escape to Witch Mountain , but Dad wasn’t so interested in the general will.

We were probably more prepared for the movie than other kids that age, because we had watched the Watergate investigation with dad. We also had been performing little skits about Watergate at cocktail parties a few years earlier.

My dad, the political scientist, had the three of us recite a dialogue about the break-in. My brother was still in his cowboy phase. We would line up in a row in front of the guests, and dad would throw out the first line.

Dad: What was Watergate, kids?
Us in unison: A hotel."
Dad: What happened at the Watergate Hotel?
Us: They put bugs in the hotel room.
Dad: What kind of bugs, kids? Little insects.
Us: No. They were recording devices.
(and so on)

Dad with his McGovern stickers on the old Volvo was really into Watergate.

All the President’s Men wasn’t exactly kid friendly, but it was better than The Tree of Wooden Clogs. A three hour film with subtitles. Some Italian peasant kid did something and people were hungry. I don’t know. That’s all I got out of it. We drove into Manhattan to see it and the three of us hung out in the lobby of the theater playing with the water fountain the whole time.

Steve and I always swore that we weren’t going to do that Professor Parent thing and make the kids too squirrelly, but I think we’ve failed. Jonah knows way too much about the Roman legions. And every time that my kids go to my dad’s house, Dad pulls out the presidential flash cards and drills them.

Published by Laura

3 thoughts on “The Terrible Things That My Parents Did To Me”

  1. Except for the sports thing and the fact that Geeky Girl knows who Hannah Montana is all too well, we’re failing too. Geeky Boy has gotten in trouble for looking up things his teacher says on snopes.com and reporting back that she’s dead wrong. They understand the political process better than most adults. They’re subjected to NPR in the car almost always. Oh well.

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  3. My parents made us do a similar line-up, but ours was a repertoire of religious songs, performed mainly for my grandmother’s friends. The marquee number was “Sons of God,” which we secretly referred to as the vampire song, because it features the lines “eat his body, drink his blood.” We did watch a lot of Watergate too though, and I had a set of Nixon family paper dolls, given to me by my grandmother. Mom said that Grandpop was spinning in his grave, but Grammie was all about the sales.
    Our cousin Jenny had two professor parents, and she was about seven before she learned that the heads on her Minnie Mouse slippers weren’t really called Hawthorne Mouse and Melville Mouse.

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