Do I Wanna Be The Pot or The Kettle?

  I just recently made plans to go through my Backstreet Boys memorabilia as part of my New Year’s resolutions to clean up the garage.  I had managed to find just two boxes of stuff but I know there’s a third floating around somewhere in there.  Yeah, I was THAT in love with them that I showed my support by shelling out hundreds upon thousands of dollars for merchandising that my mother said would soon collect dust.  Now I guess you can say that I told you so because that is exactly what it is doing right now.

  Just a few days ago, I managed to look into one of those boxes and peruse my stash of BSB.  I had cups, toys and bags from the big promotion Burger King had for the guys.  I had these things that once played music, but the batteries have long since died.  Then, I looked further and found I actually had in an old cigarette wrapper encased in a PICTURE FRAME clippings of HAIR!  I had to laugh and ask myself, “WHY?!  What the hell did I pay for THIS?!” 

   Here’s the story.  When I was a teenager back in the 90s, the big thing at the time were boy bands.  Now, there were two major armies:  Backstreet Boys and ‘Nsync.  I was a Major General in the Backstreet Boys army.  I was such a hardcore fan that they were on my notebooks, Trapper Keepers and my text books.  I had so many posters of them in my room that it actually came to be considered wallpaper.  It got so bad that it overflowed onto my bathroom walls.  One day, my uncle came over to use the bathroom and he later told me he felt awkward about taking a piss while Kevin Richardson was staring at his junk.  I still laugh about that moment to this day.

  It just occurred to me that any future offspring I may have is going to, someday, inherit all this stuff.  I’ve basically already started to collect on stuff that I am going to eventually unload on my children.  If I have more than one child, I am going to have a hard time choosing which child I unload this stuff on when they’re adults. 

  “I bequeath my Backstreet Boys memorabilia to my son, Milton!”

  “Aww, dude, mom really did not like you!”

  “Shut up, Thornton!  You weren’t exactly mom’s favorite either!  She left you her collection of Barbie dolls!”

  “You’ve got a point there.”

  Yeah, I also have a collection of Barbie dolls, which are the only dolls I own because they are not so creepy and because it’s been my mother’s tradition every Christmas to gift me a Barbie doll or two.

  Now that I am a bit older and wiser, I am going to one day have to endure my eventual child’s latest pop obsession and reprimand her about it.  And then herein lies the question, “Do you want to be the Pot or the Kettle?”  So if you have kids that did what I did, think back on your teen years and ask yourself said question.  Yeah, it’s a Vicious Cycle.