Wakeboarding

My socialization while growing up had everything to do with my parents. In my household I didn't have just one certain style of parenting. My mother was a permissive parent, and my father was very much an authoritative dad. This was able to happen because my father travels a lot of the time and is out of the house, therefore giving me the chance take advantage of my mom being so much of a push over. When my father was gone on business I could get away with anything such as not cleaning my room, staying up as late as I wanted, and receiving anything I wanted. If my Mom did not giving in to my requests I would just throw a simple temper tantrum and five minutes later victory would be mine. On the other hand when my dad was around everything was to be done his way. If he didn't think I needed it, I did not get it, no matter how much complaining and whining. In my Dads mind I had to deserve everything I received, if I did something wrong couple days earlier he would remind me about it as I was asking for a bike or what ever else it is I wanted. Don't get me wrong my dad wasn't a mean guy or an abusive father, I knew my limits and when every I would get dumb enough to cross that line, he was right there to put back in my place.

It isn't hard for me to think back to my gendered socialization, strictly because me being a man was drilled into my head since the day that I was born. I was born on January 6th 1985 in a suburb of Olathe Kansas, and In Olathe high school sports are everything. I have pictures of me when I was five months old with cowboy outfits, and football uniforms. As I became old enough to walk I was thrown into every sport possible. I played football, baseball, soccer, and basketball. I had practice year round sometimes everyday, and no matter how much complaining I did I was at every practice everyday. My father wanted me to be the best at everything I did; therefore I spent many nights after practice practicing with him. When I was that young I enjoyed every second of practice with my father. Being the best was so deeply instilled in me that anytime I failed it was a catastrophe to me. For example in baseball I would probably only strike out three to four times a season, which is great looking back now, but when I did strike out I became irate. I would be kicked out of those three or four games a season for throwing my bat and helmet. If I were to lose a soccer game I would not get in line to shake the other teams hand. I had a severe problem with sportsmanship, and my dad did not condone it what so ever. It got to the point that I had to see a councilor about my anger in sports. As I grew I became better and about the time I was in high school I had narrowed my sports down to football, and baseball. My parents wanted me so bad to become a star on the football team. Playing Junior Varsity wasn't going to cut it for me or my parent playing Varsity was the only option. Football was by far the largest sport in Olathe, and when I say large I mean 20,000 people at a game. My parents kept pushing me to get better, and I wasn't fighting them I also wanted this for myself.

Outside of sports my parents wanted me to be an upstanding student and person. My parent both graduated from Northwestern. My mom is a learning disability teacher, and my father a well known businessman in the auto parts world. I guess my family would be classified as upper class, but I do everything in my power not to let people know that. My dad and feels that everything that I do reflects on him so my grades had to be good, and I could ever break the rules. If I got a bad grade my mom thought it was the end of the world because she was a teacher and her son should be a better student. For my father it was an even bigger deal for me not to do badly in school or be in the principal office, because many of my classmates parents worked for him and information about me would definitely get back to my fathers employees.

The role of homophily conflicts with most of my parents wants because they want an upstanding student and young man, but the people I that I associated with were the opposite. All of my friends were meat head football players, and the cheerleading squad. Almost everyone was a trouble maker of some sort. We liked to party and have fun, but that always