To the Mitten, With Love.

I adamantly disagree with that saying “you can’t go home again.” Know why? Because I just did. And it was awesome. Boom. Take that, Thomas Wolfe!

First of all, I think it’s pretty fair to say that my parents pretty much curled up into the fetal position and cried the moment I left, because I’m a good time and everyone knows it. Also, maybe because they were a little bit surprised that I’ve made it this far into adulthood without sustaining a closed head injury and they know it’s only a matter of time.

Anyway, within the first six hours of my arrival, I somehow managed to coerce my parents into a rousing conversation about their “Top Five Freebies.” For those of you unaware of this game, it’s where you spend a lot of really important time thinking about what celebrity you’re down with banging if they happen to enter your world sphere, and your partner can't get mad. Oh, and assuming that they’re also willing to bang you, but that's secondary, let's get real. This is something I spend more time thinking about then, say, the difference between a castle and a palace (which I also thought about AND learned about on this trip – yahtzee! We’re a multi-faceted family.)

Also, I’m pretty sure it’s something the members of Mensa made up, which is how I came upon it.

Obviously.

So, after spending about 15 minutes reminding my father that we could not, in fact, suspend reality and the space-time continuum and talk about people we’d do “back in the day when they were hot” (I mean, this is real life, people, focus!), I was able to get a pretty decent list out of ‘em!  Also, I then immediately called the first therapist in the phone book and asked what it meant that I was encouraging this behavior from my parents. But whatever.

It should also be noted that the next day, hours and hours after the original conversation, we walked by an advertisement for Josh Turner and without prompting my mom said “Ooh! Remember that list? Put him on it, right there at the top!”

Aaaaand this is why my mom is awesome. Also, is it weird to sort of be jealous of your mom’s list?

Are you my new dad?

It should also be noted that I very obviously was on vacation when I didn’t make my bed until well into Day Four. This will be shocking information for those of you who remembermy fear about death as it relates to bed-making. You see, when I’m at home, my parents are right there on the front lines where all the action is, so if I died in some freak cherry-picking accident or something, they’d know that I totally had my life together right before the tractor got to me. However, when I’m back in New York, I’m pretty sure they’d somehow deduce that it was that freak, sub-par stove in my lopsided kitchen that did me in, or that it was because I didn’t put on enough sun block, or because I was wearing the wrong shoes to walk around in.*

I don’t know, it’s gotta be hard to be a parent of an (alleged) adult, and they do a really good job at towing the line and realizing that, inexplicably, I’m able to make it out alive every day relatively unscathed. Oh, and speaking of making it out alive, check out this photo I found while home this week. Please note that we are in a canoe, fully life-vested up, on GRASS, in our backyard. Which was nowhere near water.

“Hey, we got you into adulthood alive. We did what we had to do.” – my dad

Anyway, thank God you can go home again, because it was definitely the break that I needed to reboot, eat a lot of ice cream, get my ass handed to me by my 63 year old dad in our 12 Mile Bike Riding Olympic competition, and laugh pretty much the whole time. We were like our very own Pure Michigan ad, sex lists and all.

*Confidential to my parents who had all of these concerns – and more! – while I was vacationing. Ahhh, to be a parent of me.