Old School parents

Flint, Mich. - My parents are Old School. As hip and progressive as they can be (or like to think they are) they're pretty much like any other parents: set in their ways.

To wit:

* They don't have a dishwasher. They still hand wash every...single...dish. Claim that they don't trust dishwashers, whatever that means. I didn't know inanimate objects could be trusted. Now, this brother can't live without a dishwasher. I've rejected apartments because they lacked them. I hated washing dishes as a child, almost as much as I hated cutting grass. Andrew and Earnestine have decided - despite years of protests by me and my brother - that they don't need one of those contraptions. "I like washing my own dishes," my mother said, slopping suds around in the sink.

* They don't have air conditioning. Do not adjust your computer screen. This is not a mis-print. Their reasoning: It doesn't get hot enough in Michigan to need it. That, as anyone who has ever been in The Mitten for the summer knows, is bs. It gets hot. Africa hot. Granted, the heat doesn't stick around for half the year like it does in Texas, but the intensity is just as bad. My parents also argue that because of the design of the house - the family room being hidden in the back, the front of the house facing West - the house keeps itself cool, for the most part. There is a bit of truth to that. Still, there's a reason why I refuse to come home in the summer.

* They still have dial up Internet. This is just trifling times 10. Andrew Sr. gets free AOL from his job. Alright. But high speed doesn't cost THAT much more. It wouldn't kill them to splurge for the extra $25 per month to upgrade to dial up. It's hell trying to do this blog from their computer, which is why I'm doing it right now from a Starbucks. Of course, if they DID upgrade to high speed Internet, they would have trouble, because...

* They still use Windows 98. You read that right. Not Windows 99. Not Windows XP. They are still using Windows 98. The other day I tried to pull something up using adobe acrobat, and I couldn't because their version of Windows is so outdated.