malloreigh

I don't get it either--but I regularly, both in my head and out loud, thanking my parents for that. I would try to say it's religion like most people tend to, but I've known enough religious people (or, at least, Catholics) who don't think like you described your middle school lady, and who don't think like the church would theoretically tell them to, so I think it's got to boil down to what kind of people were teaching you things when you were too young to know that you were being taught. And those people are parents.

Doesn't make it any less frustrating, but that's the best answer I can find. It's what you're taught when you're young. It usually takes a massive, life-changing occurrence to change that kind of thing, and most people don't have that type of occurrence (including myself--and, to bring it full circle, the fact that I think I'm on a good track is probably due to my parents' influence, because it couldn't honestly have been anything else).

So, yeah. I don't know what the point of that was. The fact that your parents were wrong on things doesn't give you an excuse to be wrong on things. But sometimes it makes me a tiny bit less pissed off or appalled or hurt when I think about where people get their ideas and how hard it can be to break away from the ideas you get early on.