Insane Parents!

In My Humble Opinion
1

My mother is driving me up a wall! Not an original statement, but I’m sure there are Dopers out there who can relate. :rolleyes:

If anyone has a story about crazy relatives, please share.

Here are some of mine:

My parents divorced when I was 5. The custody battle ended when I was 16. They are stilling fighting over “back child support.” Ladies and Gentlemen, I just turned 29. One of these days I will submit this to Guinness.

Mother and Father had a fist fight on the front porch of my father’s house the day I graduated from High School.

2

Not my parents, but my father’s mother. I was 20 at the time, my sister 16, and my parents had been married for 21 years. And she said to my father, in front of my mother, with me and my sister just the next room over:

3

Thank you for starting this.

I have to keep reminding Mother that I am not always wrong. She is not always right. Matracide is starting to look better as each day goes by.

4

One mother I know keeps every merit certificate and record of academic achievement of her son’s tacked up on a giant pin-up board and sent him to school with a 40 degree fever 3 days in a row (aren’t you supposed to call a doctor when that happens?!). And she once bought lots of expensive ceramics and displayed them around the house without removing the price tags.

Scary woman.

5

I with you Booker57. My fiance and I are planning a wedding. We’re paying for. In reality, my beloved makes a lot more money than I do, so its more like he’s paying for it. One of these days I’m going to snap at my mother and scream “If you want it your way, you pay for it!”

Sigh. In my next life I’m going to be a bacterium. No parents, no social complications. . .

6

My stepmother got a haircut she didn’t like, went home and chopped off all her hair with a pair of scissors. Oooooookay.

She also got very angry when she didn’t guess the murderer at our murder mystery dinner and my oldest sister did…she actually left later that night and checked into a hotel. This was during Christmas break. I ended up cooking for everybody the rest of the time we were there, and everyone helped clean, and the house was a good deal more peaceful.

7

Your stepmother sounds a lot like my mother. (She does have an identical twin sister! :eek: :eek: )

This may need to be sent to Ask the Straight Guy. Why do men marry women like this?

8

Is she related to my SIL? One of the things that I like about their new home is that she’s taken the good glass out of the display case and put it into a place I can’t see it. They’ve been married over 6 years, it was a wedding present. She’s never used it, and the reason she gives is that “if we use them, then the stickers may fall off!” (the golden stickers saying “lead glass”). I’d like to hit her over the head just for that, but I believe her husband has dibs. That’s probably the reason he convinced her to put something else on display, those stickers got on his nerves as much as on mine but more often.

She’s one of those people who worry about “proprieties” the whole time. One of those who actually seem to invent new proprieties. Last Christmas she invited our friends over to her place for dinner one day. Please note the “our”; these are either guys I’ve known since they were born, their SOs, or girls I’ve known since we moved to town and their SOs. SIL didn’t even meet most of them until a few months before the wedding (she is from another town and the few times she’d come over, she’d come with her friends and refuse to meet ours because “that would take too long”). Unmarried bro and me assumed I was invited too. Married bro assumed I was invited; married bro asked me in front of SIL what would be a good place to get a pastry that’s typical of that night and I happily gave the information and offered to do the reservation. SIL thanks me, she is so busy, it’s so nice of me. I ask how many are we and she says “we? oh, there’s no we, you’re not coming!”
We didn’t kill her, but like I say the first one to be surprised was her husband. Who last I checked lived in the same house as his wife, but when it comes to “proprieties” she’s an alien. The reason she gave was that “since you’re never here, I don’t see why would you want to be with our friends”. I managed to explain that “they’ve been my friends for quite a while, actually; I keep a steady stream of email with several of them” (not with her, SIL is practically computer-illiterate) “and well, precisely because myself and several of them are always out of town this seemed like a good occasion to meet all of them.”
Well. I didn’t go (didn’t go pick the pastry either, but I did the reservation), and the first thing four of the guests said after “hi” was “hey, where’s Nava? I brought her Christmas present” :stuck_out_tongue: :stuck_out_tongue: :stuck_out_tongue: :stuck_out_tongue:

I do not tink I’m having a “positive SIL day”…

9

A couple months ago grandmother managed to turn “Mom, the bacon is moldy” into “My children don’t love me!!”

And I can’t even blame it on senility, she’s always been like this. My poor mom.

10

My mother hates my best friend. BF lives in the same town as my brother. This past December, the plan was to meet at my brother’s place for dinner on Christmas Day. Since my sibling doesn’t wake up until late in the afternoon, my fiance and I went to BF’s house first to spend some time with her and her family.

My beloved and I arrived at my brother’s house before my mother. When she arrived, she came in, handed my brother her packages and then stormed back out to her car. My brother followed her and asked what was wrong, turns out that she was mad that I had gone to my best friend’s house that morning! :rolleyes: When I found out, I wanted to scream :mad: I tried to avoid the subject for the rest of the day.

My poor fiance! What has he gotten into?

11

Is this a bad time to mention that as you get older you’ll start to recognize your mother in some of your own behaviors? (ducking)

12

AAAAHHHHHHHAAAAHHHHAHAH!!!

I take medication and go to a therapist. I’m hoping that it will prevent this from happening.
But I post complaints in an anonymous medium.

13

Yeah, I know people like that (looking at you, Mom). I think she’s used her good china and crystal maybe a dozen times. I know when I was a child, it was all packed away, never to be used. It was the good china! You weren’t supposed to use it! :rolleyes:

[OT Mini-Rant]What’s the point of having good stuff if you never use it? When we got good crystal, I spent about an hour picking those damn stickers off, so we could actually use it.
We got a beautiful Waterford vase for a wedding gift and I use it all the time for cheapie grocery store bouquets.[/OT Mini-Rant]

14

Here you go :smiley:

15

Aaaand it’s been sent to my mom. Thanks. :smiley:

16

Oh, Sampiroooooooo…where are you?

17

Yep, that’s what Mom does with her Bohemia Glass vase: she buys bouquets for herself pretty often, but her favourites are actually the cheap ones we get her from the weekly street market, because they mean “I thought of you”. That is what stuff is for, using it!

There was a thread once where someone mentioned going to people’s houses and not being supposed to use the cutie-pie soap figurines or the towels because, you know, we’ve put them there to look cute, not to be USED.

SIL was in shock when she gave me some scented candles and I actually lit them a few days later. I told her it’s just the pyromaniac in me, I’ve never burned pieces of paper in class like some of my male classmates liked to do but I do insist on burning candles. Being unable to understand tongue-in-cheek, she looked at my brother searchng for encouragement and he told her “honey, I’m sorry but you know she often burns candles, if you don’t want her to burn the presents give her ceramics”

When I’m not mad at her it’s actually quite funny comparing her to Mom. They have a lot in common, for example Mom tends to fret over “ohmygod I saw her walking rapidly on the other side of the street and I waved and she didn’t wave back” too. Mom’s gotten better with time but there are still times I’d like to crack her skull open and check out whether there is a brain inside; SIL has been getting better too most of the time… but she does give me the occasional anatomy-class impulse.

18

Yes, I remember that thread. :slight_smile:

19

Well there’s your problem right there. No one’s parents are sane while a wedding’s being planned. I think it’s a rule.

20

Man, I could dedicate an entire thread to the antics of my family. Let’s just take the most current situation:

My dad’s birthday is coming up. My sister is very close to him (both geographically and personally), and she suggested that we have a dinner for him on his birthday. I tell her that would be cool, and we start planning. I go to get off the phone, and she asks if I wouldn’t mind having it at my place because I have more room. Okay, no problem. So, I’m expecting that it will be my sister, her 10 year old son, my dad, my husband, and me. Her table only seats 4, so that makes perfect sense. Okay, no problem. We plan a little more because of the change, and as we were hanging up, she lets me know that I also have to invite our other two siblings, their spouses, and their kids.

So, in the space of one phone call, this has gone from me attending a dinner, to hosting a dinner for 5 folks, to hosting a dinner for 9 adults and having 3 toddlers running around my house. (We don’t have kids and we don’t plan to have kids, so our house is not particularly kid-friendly. We also don’t have seating for 12 people. My other sister has seating for 12 people easily, but she’s not a sucker… I mean, nice person like I am.)

You know the story about the frog jumping out of the hot skillet, but getting boiled to death because the water heated up so gradually? Yeah, that’s me. I just keep telling myself that I’m being a good daughter for my dad’s sake. Unfortunately, this is a pattern where my sister will come up with an idea, manipulate people into doing the grunt work, but claim credit for the whole thing because it was her idea.

And don’t even get me started about weddings, because that’s a whole other novel.