Kids say the darndest things...

One of the huge downsides of having 8 billion people on the this Earth is that there are only so many 'unique' names to chose from. With 1 out of 25 Americans named 'John', it makes you wonder how many parents feel forced to think of baby names that are out of the box. Well, with the turn of the century, it seems like a lot of people have gotten extremely creative with baby names– and not in a good way.

Raising a well-rounded child is always a conundrum. I can't speak from experience, but I imagine it would be particularly difficult to keep your teenager grounded if your family is affluent. Teenagers are inherently entitled, but imagine throwing a couple million dollars in their bank account along with the latest iPhone.

Everyone wants to play the blame game when it comes to a car accident. They shouldn't have merged here! They were going too fast! They were parked safely and visibly? It's easy to point fingers at the opposing party in any fender bender, but when a guy hits a car that's parked in a perfectly normal parking spot, there's no secret about who's at fault …

Nobody wants to disappoint their parents– especially their mothers. In fact, it was ingrained deep into our psyche at an early age that when our parents got mad at us, that was sort of okay, but if they were disappointed in our rebellious behavior, there was no greater pain on Earth. Obviously as we all grew up and moved out of the house, we became accustomed to our own illicit activities, but mom doesn't need to know what we do with our spare time or what vices we hide under our pillows.

Family norms in the last 50+ years have been shaken up quite a bit. The classic ‘nuclear family'– with a stay at home mom that cooks and cleans, while dad goes off to his 9-5 job– used to be a norm, but nowadays, family structures look a little different. Most people would agree that the only thing that's remained the same in family relationships is that each parent is expected to contribute SOMETHING, whether it's financial or otherwise. But some people still cling to the old ways...

This is not the neighbor you want living right next door to you. When you're young, you never understand why people care so much about their plants. Who cares about a bunch of dumb flowers if they're blocking the path you want to bike through? But as an adult, I totally get why people are so precious about their plants . It's because they're fragile in a bunch of different ways. If you pull a flowers' petals, it's done for. If you forget to water it for a few days, it'll do a dramatic wilt. If…

Vegans always have to tell everyone they're vegan and they incessantly force their vegan-ness on everyone around them. The Holy Crusade of veganism is a plague of misplaced good-intentions, which is all fun and games until we find families caught in the cross-hairs.

Handicapped people get dibs on the choice parking spots– and they deserve to! Life is hard enough when you're struggling to be mobile, the least the rest of society can do is let you park right in the front. For most folks, it is second nature to be lenient to people with disabilities, even if there is no technical handicapped spot, but for one doorman, a real stickler, the rules of the street would NOT be bent on his watch.

Some people have dreamed about their wedding day since they were a little kid. Childhood dreams of Cinderella dresses, clinking champagne flutes, and a black-tie affair can sail through a kid's mind without a second thought, but in the deep south, an outdoor, summertime, black-tie event is a little more complicated to plan than an enchanting Disney-style ball. Guests could lose more than a glass slipper in those hot n' sweaty conditions...

There's always a little drama at the family barbecue. No matter which way you slice those Deviled Eggs, there's going to be a cousin or a random Auntie causing a stink. In most families, there's at least one grouchy grump that's ready to ruin the entire day for everybody– in this case, over a the likes of a ripe-n-delicious banana.

Pregnancy is intense. You gain 50lbs, your feet swell, your back hurts, and strangers are always trying to touch your belly– but what a lot of people forget is particularly exhausting, is that you have to carry on with regular life anyways! So even though you're a walking, talking baby factory, life goes on.

Dads always have some kind of problem with the neighbors. Perhaps the innate dadness of living in a neighborhood and showing your dadly dominance over the other dads, but at some point, there's a natural progression from friendly competition into neighborly rivalry.

TikTok trends are usually only going viral because some audacious teenager got footage of themselves doing something stupid, obscene, or way out of line. As a parent, trying to teach your kids between right and wrong is difficult enough, but when all your teenager wants is to get likes on their videos and social media validation, the moral high-ground starts to look pretty lame.

Growing up with divorced parents sucks. Obviously when mom and dad split up, it was because of some unresolved conflict– or ‘beef’ as they say– that forced their hand on ending their marriage. When you have kiddos thrown into the mix, things can get messy.

Daddy issues