Entitled Parents

Be careful what you preach... specially when they aren't your kids

Back when I was very young, maybe 6 or 7 years old, my dad use to work as an engineer for a computer company. I can't exactly remember what they made, but my dad has always explained it as that they made super computers for other companies and a few times for the CIA.

My dad, despite being a stupidly tall guy (6 foot something) is a relatively calm and open guy and because he's traveled the world a lot, his understanding of language and culture has always made him very valuable at his job. He once stopped his boss from insulting a Japanese representative when they were invited to the guys home and he almost walked into the house with his shoes on.

That being said, he's also has a temper if he gets mad at someone, namely when they start messing with us.

My sister and I were often at our parents place of work as they didn't have money for a babysitter and we were in general good at not messing with the workplace requirement. That's not to say we didn't place with some of it, we certainly played with the typewriters, white boards and the photocopier (thanks to that I also know how to fix a jammed out no matter where it's all), but we understood certain machines were not to be touched and never erase anything from a board that was already written on.

So we weren't perfect kids, but we were good ones as a general.

Another thing about us, due to our culture, my sister and I weren't raised with the whole "the stork comes with the baby" or "wait til marriage before sleeping with someone" that most of our American friends were raised it. Think Wednesday Addams from the movie where the baby brother is born. That was us when asked where babies came from, and we've known that since I was like 3.

Anyhow, most of my dad's coworkers were aware and cool with this, except this one guy I'm gonna call Adam. I don't know what his faith was, but Adam has issues with my sister and I being so well informed on matters of biology. To him, we weren't Christian enough.

I guess it didn't help that we didn't go to church and when he started telling us the story of Jesus, we didn't instantly guess the man and woman in the start were Mary and Joseph and that we told him it was a weird story.

For the most part my dad just shrugged his antics off but I do remember him telling Adam to "not preach my girls cause it comes off cultish".

That didn't stop Adam, but thankfully we were either to open minded (or dumb depending on how you look at it) to fall for any of his "lessons".

Then, one year, Adam overstepped his bounds. I can't remember the conversation, but Adam has found my sister and I doing our homework in one of the meeting rooms when he started talking to us about purity.

I know. I know. The red flags are going up now, but back then, we were young and trusted adults easily. This was a time before cellphones that could fit in your pocket, faxes were common business practice, and if you wanted to play a game on a pc, you had to us docs before windows opened.

Anyways, it was so long ago, I can't remember everything he said, but he started to talk about how we Should ask our dad to take us to a special ball for fathers and daughter only to make a promise. I did t know it at the time, but he was talking about a purity ball.

For those that are thankfully unfamiliar with purity balls, they are formal dances where daughters go with their fathers to promise to him and god that they were remain pure until married. The fathers in tow, promise to protect their daughters purity, mind, body, and soul. This promise is made with a huge ceremony and a ring that the father places on his daughters finger.

I'm sure it's innocent and everything, but even to this day, the ceremony sounds like a wedding to me and gives me the heebie-jeebies.

Adam kept trying to push the idea of asking our dad to take us to one of these balls, but it was honestly only confusing us. It sounded like he was saying he wanted us to marry our dad, which wasn't possible. He was married to our mom after all (again that wasn't what he meant but it was what we were understanding it as. He didn't know that cause whenever we got nervous around adults, we often talked together in our native tongue. It was a good way to discuss stuff without insulting someone).

When Adam could see we weren't going for it, he excused himself for a second before coming back with a piece of paper with a bunch of writing on it and asked us to sign it. We didn't know what it was, but we knew better than to sign something without our parents looking at it first.

I think my sister asked what it was, and Adam sort of explained it as "it's a promise to always be your daddy's little girls" and "to not give anything special away to boys". Whatever it was, it didn't make sense to us, so my sister took the paper and told Adam she was gonna ask our dad about it and hopped off before Adam could stop her.

I remember watching the color drain from Adam's face as he called after my sister she didn't need to disturb my dad over a silly thing like a piece of paper before he hurried off. Not 2 seconds after Adam booked it, my dad came storming in, slamming the door open and his face red hot with rage. I've only seen him that angry once and that was when a teenager on our street had tried to hit me with a rock fired from a slingshot (a story for another day I guess).

He takes one look around, demanding three gritted teeth "where did Adam go?" and I, scared that he was mad at me for something I didn't know I had done, squeaked a "he left", before my dad storms of bellowing Adam's name.

My sister than cake in with my mom and, while she was angry too, she started to ask us what Adam had talked to us about. I don't think we remembered a lot of it, but I recall my mom seeming more at ease after she was sure that we hadn't been brainwashed or something.

While she was talking to us, we could hear our dad yelling at the other end of the office building, but couldn't understand what he was yelling. It's first years later that my dad told us he had cornered Adam and threaten to break his jaw in the worst possible way (he could probably done it too. He was originally a dentist before discovering his love for engineering) if he ever uttered another piece of cultist crap to us again.

My dad isn't anti religion btw, he just believes in taking it all with a gram of salt and to take the best parts of it with us (be kind on to others as you would be to yourself).

Adam avoided us after that and I think quit shortly after. The boss of the company wasn't a fan of his preachings either (his own daughter was there some of the times we were) and because of my dad being able to speak fluently French and German, he wouldn't fire him because he was the only one that could take with one of their most important costumers.

As I kid I didn't understand it at all, but as an adult now, it creeps me out to think some people will push their beliefs so strongly on others, including little kids.