Legal Quandary

GET to Know Me!*

Alt Title: Why I am the Way I Am.

Recognizing that I only wrote one lame little self-depreciating post yesterday, I feel like I owe you all something. Since I wrote 2 days ago about my frustrations with my father, I thought I'd highlight some of the reasons why "nothing in my family is easy." This also offers some insight into why my kitchen cabinets and pantry are the way they are. Can you imagine the fun of being a child in this house?

Some of my dad's little foibles:

• He tracks his currency by serial number. He lived in Europe for 10 years and did this for D-marks (and later Euros) and Dollars. I think I might be partially responsible for this since I went through a period in Jr. High where I routinely occasionally took money from my parents. (What kid doesn't - and hey - they didn't give me an allowance! Not that it makes it right. Nor does it change the fact that EC would be soooo grounded if I ever caught her doing this.) Every morning, he prints out a list of the serial numbers of the currency he's taking with him wherever he's going, broken down by denomination. As he spends it, he crosses off the bills he hands over and writes down the serial numbers of the bills he gets as change. Obviously, coins don't get tracked like this, but he does write down what coins he gets in return.
• We clipped coupons while I was growing up - something I still do because I am cheap like that. The part of the process I have dispensed with, however, is filing the coupons by 12 digit UPC - you know, the little bar code on every product. So, in my parent's house, if you had coupons for, say, Campbell's soup, you would have to file it under 005100. Of course, every Campbell's product has another 6 digits (5 are the product code, 1 is the check code). You'd want to file those numerically within the brand code. If you're interested in knowing more about this (I can't imagine why), go can look it up here.
• After we went grocery shopping, every item had to be stamped with the date it was purchased, entered into the computer inventory (yes, even when we only had an Apple 2+, we had a computerized inventory - by UPC), and then put on the shelf, newest items in the back.
• All automobiles have a logbook for tracking mileage. To this day, whenever I drive one of my parents' vehicles, I have to write down when I leave one location, when I arrive at another location, and what the mileage is on the vehicle. Locations are recorded by zip code/Postleitzahl (plus house number if there are multiple places you go in one zip code), and all times are recorded in Greenwich Mean Time. Go here to figure it out.

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder anyone? Being a total control freak provides fun and entertainment for your kids' entire lives!

* Any resemblance to the title of a Jon Lovitz SNL skit is purely intentional.

posted by Legal Quandary at 14:51