You Don't Have To Wonder Why

My parent would complain about a lack of initiative on my part when I was growing up, you don't have to wonder why though, whenever initiative or new ideas were put forward it became a millstone around my neck. An example is when I mentioned to the parent that potatoes were more nutritious with the jackets on I was told that if I want them that way I have to prepare them myself when it was my turn to help prepare dinner. Usually we would just peel and wash them, put them onto boil and our part was over but when I came up with the jacket potato idea I was looked at as if I was trying to wiggle out of doing my share, this happened whenever i came up with an idea. With the jacket potatoes I had to brush them down so I was hardly avoiding doing my share, I still had to do something and it ended up that the parent tried to get me to do the potatoes like that all the time, do my share and everyone else's as well based on the fact that I wanted the potatoes like that.

I wasn't suggesting doing something a different way to avoid doing my share nor was I making suggestions to end up with more work. I figured when it was my turn to do the potatoes we would have jacket and if the others wanted them like that they would do it like that when it was their turn to prepare the potatoes otherwise they'd peel them and we would have them the usual way and have some variety between jacket and peeled.

I argued my way out of having to always do the potatoes and therefore everyone else's share of the work but not without having to respond to some weird and self serving arguments from the parent. The next night the parent tried to ignore the fact I won the argument by demanding i do the potatoes and then stating that it had been agreed the previous night and also that jacket potatoes were actually the parents idea, the parent explained all the benefits to me as if I had never said anything in favour of them.

I just ignored the parent, I knew I was in the right and I was not going to cave in regardless of what the parent said or did and my parent knew I was right. Later on the parent tried to make out it was all a misunderstanding but not without an insinuation it was my fault and that I was silly for fighting over something as trivial as potatoes.

It wasn't potatoes we were fighting about, it doesn't matter if something is about potatoes or something major like running a company, it was how my attempts to contribute ideas were always looked upon with suspicion, how my ideas almost always nearly ended up with landing me extra work, how the parent would hijack the idea and make out it was their own idea even to the point of telling me what I needed to do and then when I wised up and just stopped giving ideas I was criticised for a lack of innovation.

When I was asked why I didn't contribute I could have said how I always had to fight the parent to get the idea across but I didn't think the argument we'd have would be worth the effort so I just left the question unanswered.