Yes that’s right: your parents are lazy

Welcome to another instalment of WTF Wednesday, where we put the F in WTF.  That’s right, we’re responsible for the word “For” in “What’s That For?” (What were you thinking WTF stood for, anyway?)

Here at Advice Central, we get a lot of questions via Twitter, the blog’s comment section, email, entered into search engines to find the blog, and the occasional carrier pigeon.  (Thanks for all the pigeons, by the way; they’re awesome slow-roasted with butter and a bit of garlic.) This week’s question comes by carrier electron all the way from Googleville. Personally, I think it’s a silly question because the answer is so obvious, but we don’t judge the questions at IBMP. After all, there is no such thing as a stupid question, just a stupid person. It’s not the question’s fault it’s so silly. So here’s the question:

Dear IBMP,

Are my parents lazy?*

The obvious answer is YES. Yes your parents are lazy.

I don’t even know your parents, yet I am so confident in my answer. That’s the mark of a true Internet advice-giver.

I can be that confident because it’s true of all parents. That’s right, don’t act so surprised; the evidence is everywhere.

Think about it:

• All your parents do in-between driving you to soccer, hockey, swim lessons, Cubs and Tae Kwon Do, is sit around on the field in the rain or on hard benches and watch while you do all the work.
• You’re the one that has to go to school to learn stuff for 6 hours a day (give or take a few recesses and lunchtime when you eat the sandwich Mom made for you in the morning before she woke you up for the breakfast she cooked). What are your parents doing while you’re dealing with that? Nothing of any importance I’m sure. The only reason they both go to work for 8 hours each day is because they like it so much.
• Last time you thoughtlessly unwrapped a candy bar and stuck the wrapper in your mom’s hand to throw away, what was her response? I bet she was too lazy to do it herself and made you do it for her.
• How many times have your parents used the “that’s your responsibility” excuse for not driving back to the school to pick up the homework you left on your desk?
• Ask yourself this one: when you get up at 5:00 on Sunday morning and wake your dad, insisting that he get up and make you breakfast, does he get up with a smile and get to work? Or, does he grumble and moan about wanting to sleep in until at least 6:00? See? Lazy.
• You’re the one that has to eat that nutritionally complete homemade hot dinner before you’re allowed to have one of the cookies that mom spent all afternoon baking. Your parents just sit around and eat them whenever they want.
• Have you noticed they never clean your room? They’ll clean theirs and every other room in the house for hours at a time, but they’re too lazy to clean yours.
• After 6 hours of doing laundry, your parents just lounge around on the couch cutting coupons for the shopping trip they need to make after you’ve gone to bed.
• Just because Dad threw his back out repainting the house and moving the furniture so he could vacuum behind it, he thinks he has an excuse for lying on the floor on his back for hours.
• And then there’s Grandma who, even though she’s had 95 years to practice, has that stupid machine do all her breathing for her and makes the nurse empty her colostomy bags because she’s “too weak” to get off her ass and do it herself.

So, yes, your parents are lazy.

Problem solved. You’re welcome!

 *See, this is the kind of search term that leads the truth-seeker to IBMP. It’s never stuff like, “If Prometheus hadn’t tricked the gods out of the best portion of the sacrificial meat to give to the mortal man, would women still eventually have been created, or would daddy bloggers rule the Internet?”