Irony. Oh it totally surrounds us.

Yesterday I was driving home and right as I was getting on 316 my ipod started playing Teenage Wasteland. It's such a great song to blare in the car on long car rides with countryside backdrops and pretty ironic when you're driving home to celebrate the end of your teenage years.

I had asked my parents if we could go to North Carolina to see my dad's parents this weekend. I miss my grandparents and they still celebrate my birthday like I'm eight. Last year after Pap pap had a stroke we went up to visit him. He was having trouble communicating his thoughts, but one evening he lifted my wrist and kissed my tattoo. No matter what he understands me.

This weekend I asked to go up to see them and my mom totally misunderstood me, tried to schedule our trip for a weekend that didn't work for me, and then went ahead and told her parents they could fly down from Michigan to come visit for my birthday. Thanks mom. I hid my tattoo from my mom's parents for maybe nine months, because they just don't understand me. More than that, they're so conservative that they like to feed my mother the idea that I'm the wild child.

Instead of a relaxing weekend, enjoying my birthday with people I can be myself
around, I have to struggle between maintaining my personality and acting polite
and uncomfortable. Love, oh love.

EDIT: I owe an edit to love and the truth. My mom's parents used to own a wedding decorating and supply business. Weddings were their lives. About two years ago their company went bankrupt due to the economy in Flint and they had to completely reconstruct their lives. The threat of poverty may have caused them to become a little looser in their ways, and the money their family has supplied them to maintain a normal elderly lifestyle.
My father's generosity astounds me, daily. Tonight he took a portion of his bonus and just handed it over to them, because the truth is they need it more than us. To watch an old couple weep, breaks your heart. To watch my grandfather try to smile with his new teeth, tears slipping off his face, is heart wrenching.

It's only Teenage Wasteland.