... and I could not be happier.

The short of it is, because it's the Good Friday weekend, my mom's side of the family had planned to go on a family holiday. I have my disagreements with some of them, but I don't really mind them too much and I was looking forward to seeing my little kid cousins that I actually like playing with.

I mean, yeah, I'm twenty four this year and I should probably be hanging out with the adults or something, but since it's usually a choice between them - adults who talk to me like I'm a kid - and the little kids, who talk to me like I'm one of them, well. If I'm going to get treated like a kid either way, I'd rather have fun while I'm at it.

Anyway, my mother asked me to pass her clothes on Wednesday evening. I did. And another bit of context for this - I live in Singapore where the weather is like 30 degrees Celsius year round. The trip was to Bintan, which we were going to take a ferry to, and that place is ALSO 30 degrees Celsius year round.

Let's just say that my mother is somewhat traditionally minded. So when I passed her a stack of clothes for the weekend which consisted of two T-shirts and two boardshorts (not me, but this is sort of what the clothes looked like), she flipped. Here's a sample:

• "That's so inappropriate."
  
• "Why are you doing this to me."
  
• "Can't you wear something else?"
  
• "Do you want to embarrass me?"
  
• "I bought you perfectly nice clothes, why don't you want to wear them instead?"
  
• "You're going to wear this in front of the rest of the family?"
  
• "What will they think of me?"
  

Turns out she wanted me to wear polo shirts with proper collars and 3/4 trousers and proper sandals instead of slippers. Now I don't actually mind wearing those much, but for fuck's sake, it was a weekend at the beach with my family and I figured I'd be avoiding the adults and be mucking about on the sand with the small kids. Boardshorts are not actually that inappropriate. As awesome and amazing as LEGS OF DEATH WOULD BE, no one is going to actually die because they see what my knees look like.

But anyway, I passed her the clothes, she grumbled more but packed them, and then that brings us to this morning. I wake up, drag myself through the usual morning routine, open my closet door and, oh, hey, there they are.

The shorts I gave to my mom to pack.

Okay. Maybe she just ... forgot or something, though being my mom I doubt she forgets anything for real.

"Mom, where're the clothes I passed you?"

Silence.

"Mom, did you take the clothes I pass you and replace them?"

Still silence. Now we haven't really talked seriously in years - literally - bar the occasional 'hello yeah ok sure bye', so silence isn't odd, but seriously. Don't tell me she basically unpacked the clothes I gave her and silently put in new ones and then somehow expected me to just go along with it?

"Well, hey, I was planning on wearing these on Saturday but I guess I'll just wear them now. And uh if you could tell me where the clothes you took were so that I can put the ones I wanted back in -"

And then everything went to some level of hell. Here's another sampling, from both my parents this time!

• "We're going to be late."
  
• "Come down and eat the breakfast we already bought for you."
  
• "Do you want us all to be late? What are you doing?"
  
• "Can't you just wear the clothes your mother bought for you?"
  
• "What's wrong with the things your mother wanted?"
  
• "Why do you always have to find fault with everything we do?"
  
• "What's your problem?"
  
• "Do you hate us?"
  
• "Why do you have to do this last minute?"
  
• "Can't you just go along with us?"
  
• "Try to understand how your mother feels."
  

Meanwhile I'd opened the bag, taken out the clothes my mother put in (polo shirts and 3/4 trousers, called it), taken them upstairs, got together some of the ones I wanted, and...

"Mom - where are the shirts I passed you?"

"They're in your room, EVERYTHING is in your room!"

"...Okay. But I don't see them."

She didn't answer me, so I figured, eh, maybe I wasn't looking hard enough or something. Rooted around for another few minutes, and I guess my dad finally figured I wasn't going to give in, so he yelled after me that the shirts were really downstairs after all.

A summary at this point. I'd passed my mom some shorts and shirts. She'd said she hated how I look in them, taken them out, put in ones she'd bought, then apparently decided there was no need to tell me at all about any of this because this is how parent-child relationships are supposed to work for her.

To cut another long story short - more complaints about WHAT A TERRIBLE PERSON I AM to do this to them; me pointing out that they'd basically just gone behind my back, wtf, did they think I would somehow not notice; completely dissapointed looks from both of them, and then my dad sighed and said this:

"You don't seem happy."

...No. Really?

"It's like you don't want to come with us. Is that what you want? Do you want to just stay at home?"

I should say that this happened a lot when I was younger. My mom would be furious at me and blowing up for doing things that ranged from wanting to read a book or taking two minutes too long or not closing the door properly or deciding I wasn't hungry. My dad would sigh and take me aside and explain that I was hurting my mother, did I want to be the sort of person who hurt my own mother, also what would my grandparents think of this, and how would the rest of the family react, and couldn't I take the high road and compromise; and when I was a kid I'd basically start crying like the whiny little shit I was and promise to try harder and not upset her.

"Well, if you're giving me the choice," I said, "then yeah, I'd love to stay at home."

So he took the clothes I'd put in the bag, shoved them at me, closed the bag up and left the house with my mom without another word.

Which just about wraps it up! There isn't any flashy dramatic ending to this - I went up, kept all my clothes, turned on the laptop, and sat down happily. The best part about it is that I got to message the chat group for a weekly activity that I go to every Sunday and tell them that I was able to make it after all. My parents'll come back in a couple of days, of course, but for a while, at least, it'll be quiet.

And frankly, I couldn't ask for more.