I’m a relentless rule follower. It’s an established character flaw of mine. I’m so staunch in my obedience that I still, to this day, follow all the rules that my parents set for me when I was child. Even though they are completely irrelevant to me now or I totally misunderstood the rule in the first place. Here are the top five contenders that are still ruining my life despite the fact that I’m a bill paying, car driving, grocery shopping, adult woman who has not lived with her parents for over 5 years.

You Can Only Ever Order One Soft Drink at a Restaurant

This one came to a head on the weekend when I was dining in a restaurant with my parents and my father ordered a second Coke. I nearly choked on my dumpling. When I was a kid my father enforced the rule that we could have only ONE soft drink with dinner because ‘Restaurants have a mark up of 1 million percent on soft drinks. If you want a second soft drink, we’ll get a can from the supermarket on the way home.’ I totally understand this rule because by the time my brother and I had each had two Cokes it cost around $12 which my working class parents thought was a waste of money. Makes perfect sense. What doesn’t make sense is why I still cannot physically order more than one soft drink when I am a grown up and paying for my own dinner. I’ll happily order three $12 glasses of wine. But soft drink? Hells no. I’m going to Woolies to get a 60c can mofos. Just for the record, I didn’t let him get a second coke. No way was THAT going to happen. We’re Smaggles. We respect the rules.

Waste Not, Want Not

I always do everything I can to use every last bit of everything. Turning sauce bottles upside down in cups in the pantry, cutting open make-up tubes to scrape the end bits out. No matter how annoying or how much I don’t care about wasting 3 cents worth of tinned tomatoes, the rule is that you use every last bit of everything. Sometimes I even add a little bit of water to the end of the BBQ sauce to make sure I really get every last drop. I hate myself sometimes.

No TV in the Mornings

I never, EVER watch TV in the morning. When I was a kid we just flat-out were not allowed to watch TV in the morning because it was too distracting. My brother and I would be sitting there in our undies with half eaten toast hanging out of our mouths, too engrossed in Agro’s Cartoon Connection to give a crap about getting ready for school, so my mother pulled the plug on that one when I was about 5 and the habit just stuck. Sometimes I think it might be quite nice to watch the news in the morning but I just can’t bring myself to do it.

Do Not Dye Your Hair in My Mother’s Bathroom

It took me a very long time to be okay with at home hair dye in my own home because I was just not allowed to dye my hair in my mother’s bathroom. She didn’t give a crap if I bleached my hair until it fell out as long as I didn’t do it any where near her precious white tiled bathroom. When I was about 20 my brother had a girlfriend with long wavy red hair like Jessica Rabbit. I came home from uni one day and found her in the precious bathroom, hair wrapped in towel, the bench littered with hair dye paraphernalia, stinking of ammonia. You know what I did? I dobbed. I ran straight to my mother and I said in urgent hushed tones ‘MUM! Ryan’s girlfriend is DYEING HER HAIR IN YOUR BATHROOM!!!‘. It was that ‘She has a gun!‘ kind of critical situation. I never have and never will do any kind of permanent hair colouration in my mother’s home. I’ve only just become okay with doing it in my own bathroom.

Hug The Curb

When I was learning to drive my father’s favourite instruction was ‘Hug the curb! Hug the curb!‘. So naturally when I drive, I follow my father’s instructions and stick as close to the curb as humanly possible. A few months ago I was giving my Dad a lift somewhere and he said ‘Why do you drive so close to the curb all the time?‘ to which I replied ‘Because of ‘Hug the curb! Hug the curb!‘. Turns out ‘Hug the curb!‘ was a very specific instruction for a very specific narrow stretch of road near where we lived and was never meant to be applied to any other driving circumstance. I’ve been ‘hugging the curb’ for eleven years. Excellent.

Tell me, how have your parents destroyed you with their rules?