You’re probably used to it all by now, but your friends just don’t understand what it’s like having to deal with overbearing parents who are large, metallic rotary-winged aircraft. Sometimes, it feels like most people’s parents are relaxed, perfectly reasonable human beings with flesh, bone and limbs. Unlike them, your parents would hover around you all the time, making it hard for you to just be yourself, what with the super-embarrassing wind shear they’d display in front of your friends and all. Here are seven things that only you understand, as someone who had to grow up under the constant gaze of your parent’s Thommen HSL-1600 IR searchlights.
1. High maintenance and high expectations
It’s usually the job of a parent to take care of their young, but having helicopter parents can sometimes feel like a full-time job. They expected you to do everything. Chores around the house included complete routine maintenance checks, sourcing replacement parts and highly specialized mechanical service, all while completing your own recurrent licensing training and going to school? WTF, Mom and Dad? Why couldn’t I just be a kid?!
2. Winter is a huge hassle
When the cold weather came, you had it way worse than any of your other friends. Not only did you have to shovel the driveway, you had to de-ice your parents with truckloads of ethanol just to get your parents up in the morning. You and the kid with the alcoholic father became fast friends.
3. Feeling smothered
Oh man, that feeling when it’s like you can’t breath because your mom or dad is crushing your larynx under their landing skids because they simply couldn’t see directly below them. Thankfully you learned quickly how to tell if they were coming or going based off of that humiliating doppler effect they were always blaring around.
4. Ducking all the time
Ducking to avoid Mom and Dad’s 100lb blades rotating at 300 revolutions per minute was just your life. But to someone new, you always had to prep them. You’ve said, “Just keep your head down” and “Don’t go for a handshake, you’ll lose your arm,” to all your friends. And forget about bringing a date home. All those questions over the megaphone! The whole neighbourhood can hear!
5. At school, you were the first to arrive and the last to leave
Sure, you never had to deal with car traffic. But it was only safe for your parents to land when there were no other kids around, which meant you showed up at 7am and left at 5pm. And then they’d be all like, “why didn’t you do your homework while you were waiting?”
6. Having “the talk” was super AWKWARD
It’s hard for parents talk about sex with their children at the best of times. But when you’re trying to explain the birds and the bees to a kid when you’re a massive machine that flies higher and faster than any bird or bee ever could? That’s awkward! And we just KNOW you still have nightmares about the time you walked in on your parents doing it!
