Well, I'm just wondering how many other people have to quit matches and accept EXP penalties because of parents, like I do. I'm not asking for a bunch of random posts about why you have to quit matches, like the typical "I was having sex with your mom," or, "my cat had a freaking seizure" or other unrelated, pointless, immature comments. It's now at 6. That is, 6 cash prize tournaments I've been in where my parents come in and flip that I'm even on my console playing "that stupid Halo game!?!" It's unbelievable. I do not understand it. It's like, the fact that I've had perfect grades since I started school, play 2 sports, tutor, play the violin, and fulfil all of their petty, esoteric, trifling, pointless commands isn't enough. Nope. I can't play. Even after all that. >> Ok. Within this part, is my life story. If you don't want to read it, scroll down until it's not enclosed by the markings. << _________________________________________ I'm a 16 year old triracial gifted kid. I was adopted at birth; my biological mother was white, and my father was almost entirely black, and apparently as far as I can figure out through analyzing the DNA structures from blood tests, a tiny part asian. You can't even tell from looking at me, I just look like a light skinned brutha. The one thing I can't fault my parents for is the education they've worked to give me. I was homeschooled. I tested out of all highschool subjects at the end of my 7th year of school, what we would term 7th grade in homeschooling. For the average homeschooler that translates to a 9th grade public school level, but I was ahead of that too. That was when I was 12 years old. I have a photographic memory. It's something that I find very useful, as I remember my childhood in extremely vivid detail. I'm now 16. When I was 13, I audited a senior year class my oldest brother in my adoptive family was taking for his Bachelor's (4 year) degree in Business Administration at the college he attended. I had always been good with numbers, had a photographic memory, was very good with managing money; so a career in business highly interested me. I took my first full college course when I was 14. I took one class for one semester, for the college to see if I could fit in the social setting and handle the academic load ( What a joke.... ). I'm now 16, and taking classes fulltime there. It's a fairly small, local 4 year private college. It's got great faculty though, and the teaching is fairly good. I'm working on an Associate's Degree, which covers 2 years. I can't attend the Ivy League schools I want to attend, due to my age, but I'm applying at the end of 12 years of school. I'll be newly-turned 17, and it'll roughly translate to the amount of time most people spend in traditional school. If all goes to plan, Lord willing, I'll be 21 when I earn my M.B.A., which is a Master's, Business Administration. [ An interesting statistic: The average age of the person who earns an M.B.A. is . . . 36 ] To top it all off, I now have to tutor at my college. So here I am tutoring people older than me, in a college setting. What a messed up world this is. Academics aside, I also participate in 2 sports: football and track + field. There's a whole host of other accomplishments in the realm of athletics, but I'm not going to go into detail there. Let's just say I'm well-balanced in my accomplishments in the realm of both ACADEMICS and ATHLETICS. _________________________________________ >> Life story ends. << So with all that, you'd think that maybe I could just be left in peace sometimes. So let's go back to where we started. It's now at 6. That is, 6 cash prize tournaments I've been in where my parents come in and flip that I'm even on my console playing "that stupid Halo game!?!" I've just had to disassemble my console with all the cables and everything, disconnect it from my HD computer monitor, and put it into my storage bin for all that. Why, you might ask? Because my parents can't stand the fact that I do find enjoyment in something. I play videogames. Get used to it. I have straight A's, a perfect 4.0 in college ( I'm 16 mind you ), I play(ed) the violin, [ not so much after the concussions from football ], and I'm just about done with everything for the Eagle Scout award, something not easy in and of itself. I don't understand their absolute disinterest in any valid reasoning I might put forth as to why I play Halo. They won't take any reasoning on it. The thing that sucks about this is the timing. I had recently, 7 weeks ago, stepped away from Halo for about a month. I came back 2-3 weeks ago, and started up again. Now that I'm getting my caliber of play back to the point where I can actually raise my rank, I'm trying to go from a Brigadier to General. If I can just do that, then the involvement level I'll feel compelled to invest in Halo will decrease dramatically. To almost nothing. So what do you think? Do your parents ever negatively effect you, be it when you play, or in other things? Discuss, y'all. _________________________________________ [b]Additions will be made here. Check here for updates.[/b] Addition 1: Guys, I'll be putting up a link to a Facebook, maybe, soon. Addition 2: Anyone who really wants to, can send me a Friend Request on Live. Beats playing random idiots online, eh? [Edited on 02.14.2008 11:10 AM PST]