Did you ever find out as an adult dramatic details of your parents lives prior to your birth?

I found letters from my dad to my mom right after she died. They were written before they were married. Very enlightening. It put their whole lives with us in a much different perspective.

Yes. My mother recently told me about a rape that happened when she was 14. It made me feel just awful for her even though it was 40 years ago and made me want to go vigilante on the bastard who did it. :(

I found out that my dad was a bit more of a bad ass as a teenager/young man than I had realized.

He recently told me a story about being in a record shop where he ended up showing another patron his gun because said patron was giving him weird looks. This would have been around 1970–72, long before every chump kid with an attitude was packin’ heat :P

He told me another story that involved him pouring a mix of household cleaning products into a neighbors gas tank after he saw the neighbor smacking my uncle around.

Don’t fuck with my old man!

No I haven’t… but @chyna what a wonderful treasure you found!

My aunt told me some really interesting stories about my mom. The highlight was probably the affair she had with an optometrist she visited to be fitted for contact lenses for her new job at the Playboy Mansion. This was long after my mother died and honestly I thought it was really cool to learn there was more to her than just being a Catholc housewife with a bunch of kids.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies It was a treat. My brother and I loved them and discuss them often.

@SuperMouse Your mom worked at the Playboy Mansion? Wow.

That is absolutely magnificent @chyna. I’m smiling big for you right now!

@chyna she never actually started working there. Her father found out about the affair (when the doctor’s wife called him) and shipped her
to school out of town before she got to start.

My dad, in my whole life that I knew him, (he’s dead) was always a pacifist, with a hippy mindset. War sucks, love everything, money’s retarded, that kind of stuff. I mean seriously. But according to my grandmother, as a teen, 15/16/17 or wtv, he wasn’t like that. He carried a knife strapped to his thigh, and beat the crap out of people who dared to speak to him into any language other than French. O_o Wow. He never told me any of that haha. Didn’t change much for me, I mean, I’ve heard worse things done by 15 year old boys lol.
Also, my grandma used to give him bus money to get to school.
But in the Winter, he’d keep the money, hide behind something, and when the bus came, he’d run behind it, grab on to the bumper and let himself be dragged to school. Lmao. This he told me himself. It’s hard to imagine. You’d totally get arrested if you did that today. I wonder how the hell he got away with it.

My mom, not so sure. She talked a lot about her past, but it was all anecdotes in which what was happening was the center of attention, rather than what she was doing there and how she took it. Either that, or she just bitched about people she didn’t like, telling anyone willing to listen that they’re the scum of the Earth. I bet she said that about me when I wasn’t around, haha. Mostly though, she just freaked me out with all her nightmares she got, and relaid to me.
I was also informed that my mother suffered a lot of abuse from her parents as a kid. The only picture I’ve ever seen of her as a little girl is this black and white picture. She’s standing by a chicken coop, looking really sad and a little angry.

Not anything really dramatic, but my dad once admitted to me that he cheated on my mom. However, it’s almost a fact she cheated on him a shitload of times lol.

I have a box of letters my parents wrote each other before they married. I have not read them yet. After reading @chyna‘s story, perhaps I’ll get to it. My reluctance is based on my jealousy of their relationship. It always took first place in our family and I felt that we kids kind of were in their way. They made no bones about it. They said that we kids were temporary in their lives and what they had together is what was most important.

Yes, I found out my Mother had been married/divorced before she married my Dad, and his religion wouldn’t let them marry in the church. That rule was later revoked.

Over time they told me stories about their past, but none of it changed my outlook in any way.

When we were cleaning out my mothers things after she died, we found divorce papers she had hung on to. She and my father had been separated when I was about 5 years old. She took him back, but I guess kept the papers as a reminder to herself.

My dad told me all sorts of great stories about when he was in the Merchant Marine and then in the Army. The close calls he had had. Hair raising stuff. My respect for him grew.

I wasn’t an adult, but when I was about 13 I came across a diary entry written by my mom years before. I learned that my dad had been married before, for six months, to someone named “Trixie.” I’ll never forget that. Who the hell would marry someone named “Trixie”?

@Sunny2 I’m afraid I would be the same way to my kids. haha