Parental Empathy

Tonight I came home, stoned off my ass, and my mother called me out on it. This happens quite often. I deny it, laughing uncontrollably, and then we play cat and mouse about if I were really stoned or if I were just sleepy and had been around too much cigarette smoke, which made my eyes red. Either way, it was all in jest, and nothing would be brought up about it again. We both know that marijuana is the only drug that really doesn't fuck up my life or cause me to do stupid things, so it's cool.

However, tonight, my mother decided to call me out about it in front of my dad. Regardless of whether or not she should be excused on the grounds that she was, as well, high on her own pharmaceutical vices--this was really fucked up. My dad, of course, freaks out as usual and gives me this ten minute long lecture about how pot is bad and I'm going to fail a drug test. My mother and I finally end the matter, as we proceed to simultaneously act like it was just a big joke--that I wasn't really high at all.

At that moment I realized something. I have a lot of empathy with my mother. Thinking back, I remember how we always used to be craving the same foods, without each other knowing. Almost daily when I was a kid, I would crave something uncommon like pineapple juice or Butterfingers, and my mom would come home from the grocery store with a bag full of the things that I had just been dreaming about. And she always knows when something is wrong--just by hearing my voice. And she's almost always right about the general issue, even if I deny it at the time. We fight constantly, but it's usually because one of us lying about something that's clearly a lie.

My Dad, on the other hand, is a very logical person. He has a low ability for sensing other peoples' emotions and understanding their intents. He's a kind of live-by-the-book guy. My mother pretends to be, but I really believe that deep down she's different--and pretty much exactly like me.