I'm Not Blaming My Parents...

Well, not entirely. But I do think there must be some correlation between me growing up a cable TV-deprived child at the dawn of the "I Want My MTV" era, and the fact I was up till 2:30 last night watching the music television. As a young (annoying yet adorable) child, I'd relentlessly campaigned for premium TV, only to be rebuffed time and time again by parents who told me I didn't need to watch any more TV than the 6 hours a day I was already logging. They explained cable was an "unnecessary evil," that would rot my brain -- which only made it that much more appealing to me. Naturally as soon as I was out of my parents' home I got the whole cable set up, and, much to my chagrin, so did they. Apparently the desire for brain rot is genetic.

In fairness to my parents, even if I had had my MTV as a child, I probably still would have been bewitched by the young residents of Laguna Beach last night (those kids are foxy!). But my bizarre fascination/total lack of understanding/perspective on things I didn't have as a kid is troubling. And I know I'm not alone in this. In fact, every time I see a grown person flinging himself down the street on a Razor scooter, I think to myself, "now there's a kid whose mother never let him ride a bike without a helmet or swing too high on the swing set." I also think to myself, "someone should push that loser off that silly thing." Really, it's incredibly undignified.


But I am perplexed by the phenomenon and am curious what obsessions others have these days that they think resulted from restrictive parenting. So please spill.

Don't worry, I promise this will be a supportive forum and you'll only be mocked for your mania if you're a spammer wanting me to bookmark your dating site or if you're obsessed by something really stupid, you know, totally unlike MTV, Big League Chew (the gum designed to look like chewing tobacco) or glitter-based make up products. Cause those things are just cool.