Day Twelve: Visiting parents costs an arm and a leg

Staying with parents is a bit like having your limbs removed. Because you're now unable to fend for yourself (and are indeed expected to remain dependent), you're still basically the same person, but your movements are severely restricted, your diet is changed irrevocably and going to the toilet becomes an irregular and potentially confusing experience.

What's more, you're unable to reach into your wallet, so end up having things paid for you (to be repaid with interest in guilt and gratitude), and your chances of making a clean escape depend entirely on your knowledge of the local security system (and your skill in crawling).

When they say parents make you mad the assumption is that it is genetic, or at least a rupture that comes from nurture. Not (necessarily) so.

Madness, fig. 1.1

I'd say we grow up just fine, but that, as adults, were are subjected to the regular abuse of emasculation, devagination, reductionism, renewed adolescence, and so on. Becoming a retarded, amputated child is harder when you're meant to be an adult, yet more frequent.

Perhaps old folks are paying forward for when they're drooling wrecks who need you to massage their crowns or fetch embrocation for their phlebitis. Bless them.

Luckily it's par for the course now, as without you I'm amputated anyway.