Parents. Go figure.

They’ve been acting a bit weird this year, that’s for sure. For starters, my family has always been a good Italian example of the ‘communication through screaming’ school. But, to my utter horror, every time I’ve been over for dinner this year (admittedly on very few and far between occasions) we’ve not been fighting in our usual way. It’s a displeasingly enjoyable get-along-gang type of event that quite frankly leaves my gagging. I’m really not a fan of affectionate family behaviour – it simply has to be yelling and wild gesticulating and name-calling, which is how nature intended blood relatives to interact. So what the hell has gone wrong?

[A brief aside: my Father had me laughing and my sister sulking last night. My sister often goes over for dinner, and generally is much closer to them than I am. She tends to blag a lot of free food/household equipment off them, given that her salary’s not much is comparison with mine. Anyway, in honour of my infrequent dinner visits to the fandamily, my father always goes out of his way to prepare a lavish feast. My sister moaned at him and asked why he goes to so much effort for me and none for her, when she clearly cares a lot more for them than I do, judging by the frequency of our respective visits. To which his response was: “But sweetie, have you not heard the parable about the prodigal son?!”]

Anyhow, sickly sweet family visits aside, there is further evidence of parental weirdness. My father, the stereotypical fat Italian man (for whom his company’s logo was redesigned from a skinny guy to look more like a fat Italian guy. No, seriously) has mysteriously given in to our years of nagging (read: screaming, gesticulating) about losing weight. He might not be doing it entirely au naturelle, relying on appetite suppressants to curb his relentless appetite, but he’s at least making it to the gym thrice a week, which is a lot more than can be said of me right now. He now tends to eat less than I do (granted, I have a disturbingly healthy appetite myself) or either my sister or mom do (and those two eat like scrawny pigeons). Which is a mind-warp of obese proportions.

But the real cherry on top came in a revelation last night that my folks, the walk-the-straight-and-narrow skeptical kind, are taking their new puppy to a dog psychologist. They recently got him from the SPCA, and have had trouble training him. He chews up the garden more efficiently than a mole colony could do, and has no problem chewing through the (ridiculously expensive) electric cables of the (ridiculously naff) garden light extravaganza my parents had installed a few years ago. (I would honestly do the same if my new owners had rechristened me ‘Frodo’. But I guess this is better than some of their other pet names of the past: Pashmina, Zorro, Candy). My mom explained in a totally serious voice, that this dude is an expert who talks regularly on 702 weekend shows about dogs and their feelings, and communicating with them. Now, I’m not about to dispute the fact that animals do have their own personalities, but somehow my parents falling for the “let’s talk to our dog and try get to the bottom of his social disorder” scene doesn’t gel. And I bet there won’t be any of the traditional screaming and gesticulating either. Barf/woof.