Boy, I Just Love Coming Home And Hearing My Parents Argue

The BBQ Pit
1

I have business in the town I grew up in so I’m staying at my folks’ place, which saves my customers money. How fun it has been to hear them fight!

Tonight I brought them out for a nice dinner (which is normal business practice when staying with relatives, so no big deal.) They decided to have a nice bitchy fight in the middle of dinner, then be silent for the rest of the dinner. That was fun!

Now they’re arguing upstairs. This is fun too! It’s so exotic and different from my home where my wife and I don’t yell and call each others names. I like the cosmopolitan feel of discord and marital bitterness and pointless bickering. I was so bored of harmony, quiet, gentility and kindness.

You know what else is a fucking barrel of monkeys? When they’re not fighting, and I’m with one of them, they bitch about the other one. I love that, having to pretend to be sympathetic without taking sides. It’s really nut-crunchingly great.

Even when not arguing they’re as loud as rhinoceroses covering Spinal Tap songs, so that’s really goddamn fuckstacking cocksucking shit fuck assblasting fun too.

2

What do they fight about? Did they fight when you were growing up? How old are they? Have you told them it makes you uncomfortable when they fight while you’re there?

My sympathies, by the way. I am temporarily staying with my parents and they bicker every once in a while and I hate it too.

3

When you’re taking care of business, will you be thinking of your customers or your parents? Will you be in good condition for your customers? Is this a false economy?

Personally, when I visit my parents, there’s nothing like retreating to the peace and quiet of my motel room as necessary. (Not that my folks fight much these days, but still.)

4

[Murphy Michaels]
I heard arguing, so I knew mom and dad were home.
[/Murphy Michaels]

5

At least your parents weren’t killed in a horrific accident and all you have left are a handful of fading memories.

6

I hear ya – I grew up in that house as well. There’s a long thread in the archives about when I had to go back there to help my mom after surgery. I stayed for 5 days and that was plenty long; how I managed 17 years I never know. My folks wanted me to live at home for at least a year after graduation to save money for college, but I fought tooth and nail to leave in the fall – and won. Thank Og.

Total sympathy from me. They’re ain’t gonna change, neither. I think I’d pop for a hotel room, myself.

7

Make 'em sit on the couch and hold hands for an hour.

Well, that’s what used to work when the brats would fight while I was babysitting.

My mom and stepdad snark at eachother occasionally when I’m around, and I’d like nothing better than to let off a blast from an airhorn when they are in the middle of their spat. It’d get their attention and I’d get my point across without uttering a single word.

8

Yeah, I grew up in that kind of a family. My parents used to go off on each other. They wound up getting divorced–about 15 years too late IMHO.

Looking back on it, I laugh the most at my mom getting all pissed off about after I graduated high school. I volunteered for every shift my job would give me just to get the hell out of the house, and she’d wonder why I didn’t work that hard at home.

Gee, Mom, maybe it’s because everyone treats each other nicely and respectfully at work instead of calling each other worthless sacks of shit because they’re in a bad mood that day. I mean, getting paid to work in a supportive environment vs. getting bitched at for bupkis. . . What a tough choice!

But that was nothing compared to her reaction to my finding a girlfriend and losing my virginity later that summer. Why couldn’t I have just stayed at home? Why did I have to go and do that?! What if she had gotten pregnant? I didn’t bother to answer that last one with the truth: That if she had gotten pregnant, there was only a one in three chance it would have been by me. It was cool; we all knew about each other, and we were all fine with it. God, I loved being a teenager.

I mean, there was Angie telling me she liked me, and that if I wanted to, I could come back to her place, and we could just sit on the couch and see what happened, and maybe she could show me some things that I wouldn’t see again for a while, and if it worked out, we’d be great friends with bennies, and if it didn’t, well, we’d always have the dirty sex to look back on.

“Well gee, Angie, that sounds great to a shy teenager who’s willing and eager to start the rest of his life, but my mom’s at home, and I haven’t taken out the garbage yet, and with Dad working late tonight, who else could possibly be there to listen to her scream about how life was so unfair and it was everyone’s fucking fault but her own?”

I was always a bit amazed that Mom needed to ask me what I was thinking with Angie. To this day, she’s the only one of my girlfriends who talked dirty on the phone, for instance. While I am married to a wonderful woman whom I love very much, and while Mom and I have since reconciled after she majorly chilled out, I will always thank Angie for what she did for me and to me. So thank you, Angie, and I hope you’re still happily married to the same guy with a bunch of kids 18-something-years later.

But yeah, to get back on topic, it sucks when adults don’t know how to cool their jets and act more infantile than their kids.

9

Sorry, were you at my house by chance?

I was never so happy as when I finally moved out of my parents’ house. Just imagine–not having to walk on eggshells! Not having to speak super-carefully about the other parent! Not having to listen to them argue and spat for hours! Not having to listen to them get drunk and ornery! Bliss.

My favorite part was when they separated for a time while I was in high school. As if being fifteen is not crappy enough already. My mom was driving me somewhere and badmouthing my dad along the way, and I meekly spoke up, just as books and guidance counselors and everyone advise you to do–“uh, mom, I know you and dad are having your differences, but it makes me really uncomfortable to have to listen to you talk that way about him.” Bam. Instant explosion. My mother screamed at me that if I loved my dad so much, why didn’t I just go live with him and quit taking up all her time and energy. My memory is a bit rusty, but I think I spent the rest of the drive home staring out the window and crying quietly.

I might get pissed at my roommate for not washing his dishes, but I tell you what, it’s no sweat compared to my house growing up. I’ll sell a kidney before I move back into my parents’ place for good.

10

Ouch.

RickJay Stay in a Motel next time and tell them that their fighting is why.

11

My little old crazy parents do the same thing! They love it! Of course they’ve always been like this. But old age and poorer hearing make them louder, so it is so much easier for me to hear if I’m in the next room, or outside. I’ve discovered that foam earplugs (you get them in the drug store) reduce the volume to the level of conversation.

12

My parents bicker too, always have, but I know they’ve loved each other the whole time, it’s just their communication style. I think the O.P. was referring to something far more stressful.

13

Huh?

So, what was the fight about? :smiley:

14

Well, my mother was killed by a car while riding her bike when I was 14. The doctors recommended that we not see the body. She and my father divorced when I was 12, so I’ve had both experiences. Maybe it sounds cold, but if we compare the three options (divorce, death and continued marriage) I would have to put them in that order of preference. I loved my mother and hated my father, but getting through her death was not worse than being kept up all night by my parents yelling at each other.

15

I grew up with a mom who thought nothing of bickering and arguing all the time. So, I got the idea that was normal. Boring, demeaning, bur normal.
When I had a BF in my late twenties, I had a major argument with him once, and I was surprised when his roommate told me he had hated that. Genuinely surprised. My idea was that if I tried to make the quarrel amusing, then my duty to Miss Manners was done. :o

16

Yep. I totally can relate to that and to the OP. When I go home my parents love to see me… but w/in about an hour the glow fades and it’s back to usual.
But when I talk to my mother about it that’s what she honestly believes: “The ones who’ll tell you the truth to your face are the ones that love you” and the “Cruelest people are the most honest ones. And that’s Family.” :rolleyes:
Screwed with my head for years- as my mother loves to pick fights sometimes because “she knows that that’s what (Person X) needed, a chance to yell and argue with someone and let out their feelings”.
Sharing is caring after all. Even if you’re just sharing vitriol and rage, after the fight’s over it’s done. No more, and we’re a happy family again. until the next one. -_-

17

Threads like this make me happy I have a normal, slightly dysfunctional family instead of a psychologically diseased/debilitating family.

18

So RickJay, was this some kind of surprise? I’d worry more about saving my own sanity rather than saving my customers’ money.

19

Oh lordy, reminds me of my in-laws. We left one evening, before dinner had even been served, when she decided to have a screaming fit at him because he had thrown out a plastic bag that she liked using in the garden.

20

If my grandparents had been killed in a horrific accident, Mom and Auntie would have a handful of fading, horrific memories. As is, they have a fistful of crazy, horrific parents.