Balancing Act.

Being their very first pet, the very first thing other then themselves that they had to take care of, my parent's had yet to learn the fine balance of tough love which is like walking a tight rope, lean even just a little to one side and you'll fall and you'll fail and you'll lose whatever upper hand you had and back then neither of my parents had very good "balance" so to speak although it was one skill that my father liked to boast about having, so instead of giving her a firm no when she walked on the kitchen counters they tiptoed around GB and sometimes said no and sometimes said nothing at all and most always ended up with fur in their food. My mother dismissed it saying Gaius Baltar was her little baby and could do no wrong and my dad, well my dad the eternal moderate never wanting to cause conflict, never wanting to confront anything, always wanting to have peace hung out in the gray area and let Gaius Baltar do whatever she wanted.

I have to take a moment to digress and say that that was my parents then raising their first cat, they learned a little more about balancing with they're second cat, Serenity, and a little more with their third, Boomer so by the time they finally had children my mother's real little baby, me, could do lots of wrong but because she loved me so much she wasn't about to tiptoe around me, she would set me straight so I wouldn't turn out as bratty as GB and because of her, I would grow up to have a very clear sense about right and wrong, I would learn later that, like my father, sometimes taking the middle ground is the best way to go.

As for my father, as being a father he continued to keep a level head and didn't say much but when he did, he spoke words of wisdom that would stay with me for life so it became that I had the freedom to do what I wanted but I knew my limits because I didn't want to disappoint my parents, and what more can parents ask for? But more than that my parents deserved well behaved children I mean they were in their sixties after all when they had us and then in their seventies when we were all going through those angst filled teen years. Man that must have been the worst!