Divergent curves

Parenting style has a great impact on what kinds of people their children grow up to be, and how they live their lives. And by great impact, I obviously mean absolutely no effect whatsoever. I just spent like an hour on the phone with my parents, and the conversation obviously deviated at points into V’s exploits.

It’s hilarious to think we’re from the same parents, same home, same society, similar/same schools, and same college. Some, probably trivial, facts about his lifestyle:

  – A cell phone and his own land line, at least one off the hook, all the time. Both if the person on the other end of one is dumb.
  – 30-50 bucks a day OVER a monthly allowance of 1000 bucks for “stuff”? Don’t ask. I don’t even want to know.
  – Driving around, I bet licenseless, in fancy cars.*
  – Has extreme interest in, knowledge of facts in things related to and participatory tendencies toward sport.
  – A billion friends and an insane social life involving never being at home.
  – Extremely easily swayed by trends and what people around him do.
  – Absolutely NO sorts of conversations with anybody at home, besides the necessities, like “give me more money”. Which involves humourous events like mom having to call him on his phone from another room to hear him.
  – A connoisseur of fine (and not so fine) Tamil cinema and resulting music.

I am cracking up. I will stop there.

I don’t think I am actually going to explicitly negate EACH AND EVERY ONE of those lines and call it my “lifestyle”. Not that I am embarrassed in anyway, but I bet you can do that in your head and save me the trouble. I plan to observe this sometime as an outisider, without “cramping his style”. Not to feel I’ve achieved anything vicariously, just because I am curious as to… where the curves start diverging.

(* Reminds me, men don’t have the luxury of feminine wiles to get away with this sort of thing. Like, *cough* some other people I know. Bet you assumed I forgot that, didn’t you?)