The Parent Trap

You love your retirement-age parents. You want what’s best for them. But let me ask you this: Do you know where your parents are right now?

We live in a scary world, and today’s parents require constant supervision. When it comes to the safety of your aging mom and dad, you can never be too vigilant. Your young brain is still developing, growing, and adapting, but your parents’ brains are hard and rigid, like the Pepperidge Farm cake they’ve had in the freezer since the Bush years. Their impressionable, vulnerable minds are swimming in a confusing soup of class anxiety and “King of Queens” reruns. It’s up to you to protect them from a dangerous world.

Parents have far more access to technology today than we did when we were kids. It starts out innocently enough, with them swiping their laptop screen like it’s an iPad, or buying those online supplements that make Alex Jones even redder. But, pretty soon, they’re purchasing surgical instruments online for “the collapse” and tweeting racial epithets at the Delta Airlines customer-service robot.

Are you monitoring your parents’ media diet? When you were a kid, they probably restricted what you watched. Maybe you weren’t allowed to stay up for “South Park,” or play Dungeons and Dragons, on account of its roots in “demon summoning” and “gambling.” Don’t you owe them the same courtesy? As we speak, your parents could be watching “Fox and Friends.” You think that’s “Seinfeld” they’re watching? Nope. That’s “Gutfeld!,” and his Soup Nazi has, at best, a casual interest in soup.

I don’t want to alarm you, but your parents could even be trying to relate to today’s pop culture. Right now, your mom could be holding up the grocery-store checkout line with a long, boring monologue about how much she loves “that Billy Eyelash—such a talented young man.”

And when was the last time you checked their room for contraband? When you were a kid, they tore up your sock drawer looking for bongs made from Sprite cans, or for the colored rubber bands you supposedly used to send coded messages about premarital sex. Today, while you snooze peacefully on the pullout sofa, your parents could be getting turnt on Lipitor—which we can only assume is some kind of turbocharged meth. That VHS tape labelled “wedding video” that you found stashed under their mattress? It could be mid-eighties pornography. That stuff is so grainy it’s hard to know exactly what you’re looking at. That’s why it’s so dangerous.

I don’t want to scare you, but your unsupervised parent could even be running for a seat in the U.S. Senate. I have a friend who went on a two-week vacation—when he came back, his dad had a campaign office, a super PAC sponsored by the Koch brothers, and ten thousand lawn signs that read “Commercials Are Too Loud!” He won in a landslide, and is now a ranking member of the Judiciary Committee. Do you want to be the child watching helplessly on C-SPAN as your dad asks Mark Zuckerberg to help him reset his password? Didn’t think so.

A parent with boundaries is a happy parent. Sure, they’ll fight you at first. “This is ridiculous! I’m a grown man,” Dad will say. Or: “I ran a successful Fortune 500 company,” as if that’s some kind of defense. Maybe they’ll try to hit you with the old “I gave birth to you” line. No matter what they say, you have to stand firm. Remember, you’re the kid, and they’re the parents. It isn’t up for debate.

When your aging parents act up, just think: When they were kids, there was lead in pretty much everything. Seriously, everything. Like, grilled cheeses and stuff. Next time they talk about their last trip north of Ninety-sixth Street as if it were D Day, show a little grace—just grit your teeth and bear it.

But buying a condo in Boca? Not even once. ♦