A penny for your thoughts, a dime for mine.

When I was about 5 or 6, my parents always fought. I remember it got dangerously close to divorce, and the police visited the house a few times. They fought over everything. Little things that would escalate to a night at a hotel or weekend at my grandmother's house.

One night, my dad and was listening to his Creedence Clearwater Rivival CD, and after jumping up and down on the bed and dancing to Suzy Q, I Put a Spell on You came on. After a few minutes, my mom comes in and tells him to turn it off. Of course, he asks why, and she says that she doesn't want me listening to this trash. "What trash?" and she walks over to the player, takes out the CD and walks out. My dad called her back and said some stuff about his property, and he's tired of her bitching. There was an exchange of unkind property and property of self comments and suddenly, the entertainment console starting getting flung off the shelves. The CD player was thrown off, the surround sound was thrown, the VHS player, the karaoke... I was kinda confused about that fight.

But then I knew exactly what was going on, and exactly why they originally fought. It wasn't Creedence Clearwater. I put it together from the various things and other mini fights that occured in the house, but I was never accosted and informed about any of it. I don't know about everyone else, but I feel like my cognition was underestimated when I was younger. We never bring up that time of my life though.

Everyone has their own opinions and points of view, and things just can't work when the opposite view isn't understood or at least heard. That's how arguments begin, families fall apart, gangs form, wars rage.

My mom asks me for advice and opinions a lot now that my dad's in San Antonio, I'm in Austin, and my brother and her in Fort Worth. Family of 4, divided into 3. She told me over the summer that she believes I'm old enough to know about and have input in the family's affairs now. Well that's nice. 20 is a good age to officially know about what goes on in the family. I wasn't even informed that I'd be bleeding out my vag when I was of puberty age.