My parents have never insisted on perfection. As a matter of fact, they are rather boastful of their imperfections. "It has character!" said Dad after his home-built shed started listing to one side. "No one will notice," said Mom after taping up the hemline on her skirt. My parents have both avoided the "Perfect Mother" and "Meticulous Father" stereotypes.

Perfect mothers have routines such as going to the supermarket on Monday, doing the laundry on Tuesday, going to the hairdresser on Wednesday and vacuuming on Thursday (and Friday and Saturday). These mothers, clinically categorized as those with Perfect Mother Syndrome, tend to have houses with white carpets, white kitchens and mauve Christmas trees that rotate while churning out Christmas carols. Perfect Mothers cut peanut butter & jelly sandwiches into triangles instead of squares and engage in activities such as cleaning off the mouths of crusty chutney jars and transferring leftovers in the refrigerator from big Tupperware containers to smaller Tupperware containers. But the Perfect Mother's main activity is walking around the house cleaning, straightening and perfecting perfectly perfect things.

My mom, on the other hand, has spent her entire life purchasing things that are brown or black so you can't see the dirt. As a child, whenever I wore white, I was quarantined so I couldn't get dirty. This didn't happen very often though since I was not permitted to wear white unless I was performing in a ballet recital that called for a white tutu. My childhood included no white dresses, no white socks, no white shoes. Anything that required using bleach in the washer was considered a nuisance.

My friend has a Perfect Mother who instantly sucks up flying insects in her house with a Dirt Devil. One time this friend invited some of us girls to stay overnight at her house. She requested that we bring our tents so we could have a camp-out on the lawn. We all pitched our tents at dusk. We were sleeping soundly in our tents until 6 a.m. when Perfect Mother came out and blew her horn. Was Perfect Mother calling us to a breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon? No, she just wanted us to take down our tents before the grass died.

Meticulous Fathers can be recognized in an instant because everything they own is genuine leather, down to the upholstery in their BMWs. They are meticulous dressers and necktie buyers. They use Gillette razors, their hair has the "dry look," and they order from the Sharper Image catalog.

Every action of the Meticulous Father is carefully planned. My friend has a Meticulous Father who is a doctor. He has a box of disposable medical gloves he keeps in his car to use when he has to pump his own gas.

This is a stark contrast to my dad who has been using the same rag to wipe his hands after pumping the gas and changing the oil for the past ten years. When he is finished, he throws the rag back into the trunk of his car, where it usually lands inside his bicycling helmet or in one of his ski boots still in there from last winter. Dad's trunk is like an adult toy box with bicycling gear, tennis rackets and golf shoes randomly strewn among extra cans of motor oil, antifreeze and the spare tire.

But you don't have to go as far as to actually look inside my Dad's trunk to realize he isn't a Meticulous Father. When it comes to driving, Meticulous Fathers are easily recognized by their prescription sunglasses with polarized lenses. Not my Dad. He wears dime-store shades that clip onto his horn-rimmed glasses. Actually, they match his 10-year-old rusted out car rather nicely.

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