By Benji Elkins:
Unfortunately, my parents are cheap. Super cheap. If they have the option not to spend money on something, or even not to buy something altogether, they’ll take that option. They’re cheap to the point that in my house we only use stolen plastic utensils from local restaurants. Do you have any idea what it’s like eating meatloaf with chopsticks from the China House down the street? It’s a clash of cultures you do not want to see!
Sometimes it can be too much though. For example, when I was ten I was playing soccer in a local kids’ league. And this kid, his name was Isaac Wiesel, a really small guy with glasses and curly hair, comes up and trips me, and I fall forward and land on my leg funny and I scream out in pain. So I’m sitting on the grass, my leg throbbing excruciatingly, my mom runs over and I go “Mom I broke my leg!” She goes, in front of the whole team, “Nuh-uh, see little Isaac over there? No way he broke your leg that boy’s a shrimp and fixing your leg is expensive.” So now, not only has a grown woman called a young ten year old boy (who has already faced bullying due to his size) a shrimp, she has also advocated that she is not willing to fix her son’s broken foot.
But anyways, we drive to hospital and I get my foot x-rayed, and, lo and behold, it’s broken. Now X-rays cost money and my mother was just itching, you could see the tick in her body. It was like watching Gordon Ramsey in a kitchen nightmare episode. She took on a British accent and was just disgusted with what was before her. “What the fuck is this? How much is this going to bloody cost?! Ridiculous.”
Well the doctor sits us down and he talks about treatment. He says I need a boot. And this is the epitome of how cheap my mother is. When I broke my foot I got a hand-me-down boot. The doctor goes, “We can supply you with a boot,” and my mother goes, “Nope, we got boots at home, your brother broke his foot two years ago.” Although, of course, my brother is two years younger than me, meaning I had to squeeze my broken foot into a boot meant for a six-year-old. I think I broke more bones during the healing process than from my original injury.
Man, I mean my parents are just crazy. They’re certifiably insane. And having certifiably insane parents sucks. And I’ll be honest, it’s not the fact that I can’t go out on Saturday nights or eat junk food on the weekdays that sucks. It mostly sucks because nowadays, whenever I want to talk to them I have to drive all the way to the Waybrook Mental Institution just to ask a simple question. We have to speak behind a foot deep wall of glass.
Luckily for them though, it’s all-expenses paid.