{"id":575,"date":"2010-05-23T01:14:00","date_gmt":"2010-05-23T01:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/2010\/05\/23\/rbo-parents\/"},"modified":"2010-05-23T01:14:00","modified_gmt":"2010-05-23T01:14:00","slug":"rbo-parents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/2010\/05\/23\/rbo-parents\/","title":{"rendered":"RBO Parents"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>Nothing says &#8220;generation gap&#8221; to me quite like ironing. I haven&#8217;t ironed anything for years &#8211; not since I worked in industry and had to dress like a grownup, and even then it was only occasionally. My philosophy is that if you pull things out of the dryer quickly enough, or hang them correctly during air drying, they don&#8217;t need to be ironed. My Mum, on the other hand, irons pretty much everything except underwear. Casual t-shirts, pajamas, pillow cases &#8211; she&#8217;ll iron &#8217;em. I do have an ironing board and iron, but couldn&#8217;t find the latter when asked for it. I emptied all the cupboards and couldn&#8217;t find it anywhere. My parents were leaving for their Alaskan cruise the next day, and actually made me call a couple of friends to see if they could borrow an iron before they left. No-one had one, so&#8230; they went out and bought a new one. Then made a point of keeping it in their room while they&#8217;re here &#8220;in case anything happens to it&#8221;.<\/li>\n<li>My parents have more conversations with strangers in a couple of weeks in Vancouver than I manage in a year. They come back every day with stories of meeting a couple from Australia, a woman who works for the Canucks, a lovely old lady from Germany etc etc etc. I guess it&#8217;s due to spending most of their time in touristy places with other people who are more relaxed and ready to talk than your average Vancouverite.&nbsp;<\/li>\n<li>They also have a habit of bumping into people they know &#8211; they went on a snowshoeing excursion in Alaska and met the parents of a girl who used to play netball with my sister. Every trip, I swear.<\/li>\n<li>They found out about my <a href=\"http:\/\/vwxynot.blogspot.com\/2009\/10\/ink.html\">tattoo<\/a>. I was planning on bringing it up in the next couple of days, because we&#8217;re renting a place in Whistler with a hot tub next week, but a friend forced the issue at a party last night. He asked me &#8211; quietly, but right in front of my Dad &#8211; what my parents thought of my tattoo. I threw said &#8220;friend&#8221; a filthy look, and hoped that my Dad hadn&#8217;t heard. A little while later, my Mum commented (coincidentally. Or maybe not.) that there were a lot of people with tattoos in the room &#8211; &#8220;much more than in England&#8221; &#8211; and I decided to bite the bullet. I didn&#8217;t show it off until this morning, and the reaction was &#8220;Oh, that&#8217;s not too bad! It&#8217;s very big, though&#8221; (Mum) and &#8220;I suppose it could be worse&#8221; (Dad). Considering that they don&#8217;t like a) tattoos and b) me being Canadian, the reaction could also have been worse (and possibly will be, in private!)<\/li>\n<li>I have confirmed that my complete inability to dance is genetic &#8211; on both sides of the family<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><\/p>\n<div class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both;text-align: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_Xjsb8ObOj0k\/S_iAinOJiHI\/AAAAAAAACLQ\/FcQmQHtO8bc\/s1600\/P5210166.JPG\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" height=\"400\" src=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_Xjsb8ObOj0k\/S_iAinOJiHI\/AAAAAAAACLQ\/FcQmQHtO8bc\/s400\/P5210166.JPG\" width=\"300\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<p><i>Mr E Man tries to show my Mum how it&#8217;s done. <a href=\"http:\/\/vwxynot.blogspot.com\/2008\/11\/mr-e-mans-greatest-hits.html\">He can&#8217;t dance either, though.<\/a> <\/i><\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;re leaving tomorrow for a circuit of South-Western BC, encompassing visits with my sister-in-law, a golf \/ spa stay in Whistler, and a visit with my mother-in-law. I&#8217;ll be offline for the whole week&#8230; wish me luck!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nothing says &#8220;generation gap&#8221; to me quite like ironing. I haven&#8217;t ironed anything for years &#8211; not since I worked in industry and had to dress like a grownup, and even then it was only occasionally. My philosophy is that &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/2010\/05\/23\/rbo-parents\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,58,19,35,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drunkenness","category-family","category-personal","category-photos","category-silliness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}