The Best Things You've Learned From Your Parents

I figure I've learned far more from the shitty example my parents set throughout my later childhood and adolescence than anything either of them actually sat me down for a talk about. Everything I picked up from them is a result of their own shortcomings - of which there are many. Hell, I was never around them long enough to pick up on anything.

Without bitching and moaning too much, long story short: I spent ten years in a place I hated and only realised towards the end of that time that I should have been questioning my circumstances all along. A shitfit I threw at eight was the full extent of any defiance I showed in the face of the situation, and a consequent hide-tanning taught me to not bring it up again. I did my best to play by all the rules throughout, but during the last two years of school, a few things occurred which caused me to so thoroughly change my perspective that I found it hard to accept my surroundings. The main lesson learned as a result of all that was to be assertive and perceptive from the beginning - and I'll be damned if those years didn't bolster my resolve something solid.

Oh, yeah, and when I was fifteen mum taught me how to iron things.

Jam it back in, in the dark.