We stayed out in the yard...just...stayed out there

As a result of several conversations with friends over the past couple of weeks, it's become clear that my parents had more rules than most. Evidently I was completely unaware of this when I was a child, but as a 22-year-old who spends a lot of time going, "We weren't allowed to do that...", it's kind of funny.

Some of the rules I "suffered" under:

1. No t.v. Not to say we never watched t.v., but I think I averaged maybe two hours a week until I was 13. When I was in elementary school, we were allowed to watch one show after school—usually either "Reading Rainbow" or "3-2-1 Contact." Sometimes "Ducktales" if M4 was feeling particularly lax.

2. No movies I don't think we went into a video store until I was ten, because we tended to fight. A lot. Loudly. I always wanted to rent Mary Poppins, E2 usually wanted The Cat from Outer Space or something animal-related. E3 was a staunch Cinderella kid, and her opinion was soundly rejected by everybody. Fortunately E4 was too young to care. The theatre was also right out. I saw one movie in the theatre before I was 10. It was The Little Mermaid, chaperoned by Sr. Birdman and attended with E2. Bizarre and inauspicious. I didn't see Star Wars until I was 15. I still haven't seen Back to the Future II or III.

3. No bad words I would say "No swearing," but really, I don't think actual swearing ever crossed our tiny minds until we were in middle school, and actually using swear words waited until high school. On M4's list of unacceptable words: poophead, bites, dummy, darn, dang, gross, shut up, and butt. "Stupid" was borderline. Words that'll still get me a good glare if I use them: crap, sucks, blows, damn, ass, frickin'. Funny story: whenever M4 took us to the grocery store, we would try to get her to buy butt roast because we wanted her to say it. "Look, butt roast! Get the butt roast, Mom!" Seriously, gales of laughter on that one.

4. No white shirts at the dinner table This one applied mostly to me. I wasn't a neat eater. Shocker.

5. No jumping on furniture "You'll break something," was a statement we totally believed, because E2 did. Compound fracture of the ulna or something like that. He was bouncing on the bed with a girl, already a ladies' man at seven. Jumping off things was also right out; I nearly fractured an ankle jumping off a six-foot retaining wall into a snow bank when I was nine.

6. No socks in the basement Our basement was unfinished, which means concrete floors. Running on that will wear holes in the heels of your socks faster than you would believe. "Bare feet or shoes!" was M4's rallying cry.

7. No standing on the head of the horse swing We had a swing in our basement that was shaped like a horse. It was tied to the rafters and couldn't swing very high, but it was fun to ride standing up. However, if you stood on its head, it overbalanced and tipped forward. I cracked my chin open and got four pieces of butterfly tape when I was 5. I still have the scar.

8. No playing in the corn bin My parents raised steers for slaughter so we could have relatively inexpensive meat. Totally cool. But this meant we had to have grain to feed them in the winter. The grain was stored in a giant bin in the garage, and standing or playing in it was about the coolest sensation a seven-year-old can think of. It's sort of like a cross between the ball pit at McDonald's, and sand. I don't know why we weren't allowed in it, but there was no faster way to make Sr. Birdman furious than to be found up to your belly button in dried corn.

9. No chasing the steers And really, that just makes sense. Because my dog was doing it, and we probably would have too, if our parents hadn't put their collective foot down.

10. No saying "ew" at the dinner table. We had to eat whatever M4 made, even if it was bean soup, which we all hated except for Sr. Birdman, who thought it was the greatest thing ever. We could put as much ketchup on things as we wanted, and we didn't have to eat huge helpings of things, but we were never offered other options and we weren't allowed to express our disapproval with anything more than a polite, "I don't care for that, thank you." I finally put my foot down on the peas issue when I was 12 (prompting a fight with Sr. Birdman—the first I ever won), and I don't eat bean soup (or really, beans in general) ever, but other than that, my tastes and M4's are remarkably similar.

11. No pierced ears until age eight. Except for E2, I think, whose rule was "No pierced ears...ever. Ever ever ever." The second set of piercings was allowed at 15, although I'm the only one who took advantage of that.

So basically, I have the most wholesome parents in the world. Like cornflakes, they are. I never felt stifled by growing up with out video games or the crusts cut off my sandwiches. Mostly I just wanted to get back outside and figure out how to get into the cornbin when Sr. Birdman wasn't looking.