Everyone always thinks that their own family is weird. I’ve seen my friends parents do some mighty embarrassing things in front of me, and I know that they were embarrassed. I once was dropping a friend off in my car after school in a thunderstorm, when coming up to her house we saw her dad, in a rain coat, mowing the lawn. That’s rough. My views aren’t any different with my parents. There’s something about knowing two people so well (that have known you your entire life) that is a bit frightening when you let them loose in the world with you by their side. It’s like a huge announcement: These are my parents. You can come up to them and ask them a
question about me, and they will probably (and in my case, always) give you an honest answer. It can really make someone feel vulnerable.
I went and visited my parents today. My dad just came in from a bike ride with my mom when he walked into the living room and said to me “So did you hear about this big gang problem we’re having in Zeeland? It’s been all over the news. In fact, while your mom and I were turning onto the street there was some activity going on down the road.” You couldn’t even buy alcohol in the city limits up until a couple of years ago, so it was hard for me to believe that Zeeland became this hostile so fast. I immediately denied it, but my dad stayed true to his word: “Come on! Look across the street! You can see them!” Curiosity got the best of me, even if I wasn’t a full believer in the notion that there were a bunch of dangerous criminals ready to slice the tires on any parked car or cast an evil eye to anyone within a 20 ft distance. I followed him onto the back deck that gives you a good view of the area my dad was speaking of. Across the street were 7-to-10 twelve year old girls in bathing suits, all huddled in a circle, clearly lining up to take turns running through a sprinkler in the front yard of a house across the street.
This isn’t the first time my dad has fooled me into believing something ridiculous. One time I was just getting home with some friends of mine. We were just hanging out when my dad came in the room and told me that not only did he buy two horses, but that they were in the shed in our backyard at that very moment. I was, of course, skeptical at first, but something in my 13 year old mind made me think that maybe my dad wasn’t pulling my leg this time. It’s hard when you have a parent that does this to you, because you naturally believe everything they say because that’s how you always learned things. My friends and I followed my dad out to the backyard, in anticipation of what lingered behind those shed doors. I suddenly had this montage in my head of all the things me and my new favorite horses would do together: riding through a field, going over to my crush David’s house and swooning him with all my horse knowledge, and my best friend Tonya and I riding it to the ice cream shop and everyone wanting to take pictures of us on the horse. It would be glorious. When we got to the shed, my dad made us all stand back a little bit:“You don’t want the horses to be startled and run you over, do you?” he said. He grabbed the door knobs, turned his neck and gave us a solid look in our eyes, and opened the door. “Ta da!” he exclaimed. In front of us were a pair of saw horses, blackened like they had survived a fire and no taller than my waist. They were the kind of “horses” you used to prop up wood to paint or cut up. I had been fooled once again.
When my mom and dad do something weird or embarrassing and no one’s around except people who share the same A-positive blood as them, it’s not so bad. But when outsiders are involved, you’re socially doomed. I always avoided having friends over because my parents never seem to filter anything they say for first time visitors, and they will never walk out of the room to fart. When I had my first serious boyfriend over for Sunday lunch, I remember going over all the rules with my mother on what is and isn’t ok to say while she scrubbed out the bathtub: “Don’t say anything about his hair. Yes, his parents allow him to wear that. No, that isn’t his real hair color. It didn’t hurt when he got his nose pierced either.” I guess it didn’t help that I never brought the average guy home to meet my parents that other girls my age were bringing home. After a while they luckily just stopped asking about college, not having a car, or a full time job.
Dinner time at the Heeringa household was a spectacle to witness. When my mom wasn’t starting food fights and my dad took a break from throwing noodles on the ceiling to see if they were cooked, we usually kept to the subjects of embarrassing bowel movements in public places or how my younger sister has a weird drooling problem. Once I had a friend from school over and my dad managed to somehow spill his entire plate of food on his lap. Mashed potatoes running down his leg, corn stuck in the wrinkles of his shorts, and stains of gravy on his polo shirt. He didn’t freak out or anything. He just called “Meesha!” and our aging terrier ran over to his seat and started eating all the food off of his lap until it was completely gone. My dad just continued on with his story as if nothing had happened. My friend could barely catch her breath after laughing so hard. I didn’t stop hearing about the incident for a couple of weeks at school.
I once told my mom that if I could’ve picked my parents, I would have picked Tom Hanks and Tina Turner because they seemed so genuine and honest when I see them on TV. She responded with “You don’t wish you had the parents that you were born with?” Looking back at all these situations, mentioned in this article and otherwise, they STILL seem embarrassing to me, although plenty of late night porch talks with my friends have proven that I got off pretty easy with the parents I was handed.