On being an only child

I must be bored because I spent all day yesterday watching old tv shows I torrented. Mostly Fantasy Island and Dukes of Hazard but I even stooped so low as to watch a few episodes of Eight Is Enough. I've got to say, no sentimentality there. It was the worst show ever at the time, and age hasn't done it any kindness.

My friend stopped by and being too apathetic to turn off the tv or switch the channel we watched for about 20 minutes before getting into a moral debate. Now this stupid show is also full of stupid morality; it's even probably the point of the show, but it's bizarre mixed up 70s tv show morality. The kind of morality where you slag 276 guards on the way to the bad guy and then you refuse to kill him as he runs away because his back is turned. Not the kind of morality anyone would buy into, or so I thought.

The episode we watched revolved around this antique car that the oldest kid had but kept in the garage and didn't drive. Apparently they'd made some 'rules' where anything someone else didn't use was fair game for everyone else to use. As baffling and ridiculous as this seems to me, the original incident which led to the rule was even more unreal. One of the kids had a signed baseball from a home run roger maris hit, and all he did was look at it at night. Now obviously that is a waste, so the other kids all took it and played ball with it whenever they pleased, using a collectible which would now be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in a game which usually wrecks 2-3 balls per game.

So their conclusion was this antique car would be used by whoever wanted to in the family, who only had to pay for gas and didn't have to worry about incidental wear and tear that having half a dozen people drive it whenever the hell they wanted would incur.

I couldn't believe they would make these rules, and even more I couldn't believe anyone would obey them. That is the part where the debate came in. Not so much the rules themselves but following them. Just because seven other idiots gang up on you and say you have to do something doesn't make it right. If it did, lindsay lohan would do nothing but lie on her back all day pleasing any and all comers. Oh wait, bad example.

But, I don't think it's a virtue just to 'get along', whereas my friend pointed out she had a large family in a tiny house and if people didn't try to 'get along' to some extent they'd all have killed each other. Then I pointed out I was an only child so maybe that was why I felt that way.

Then she looked at me and reminded me I have a brother and sister, and that maybe it was just because I was a self absorbed ass.