It has gone to the point I sometimes dread talking to her on the phone, she will have some problem or issue or question in her life that is in truth so totally pointless she herself doesn’t want to waste time on it, so she tries to assign it to me!
Some fast food place had a shard of bone in the chicken patty that was supposed to be boneless and she cut her gum, she told the manager and corporate but they did nothing and now she wants to sue. Son please prepare a full report on food industry liability law in our jurisdiction and how I should move forward, also find a local attorney taking such cases on research his track record to find out his ratio of wins and…mom no I’m not doing that I’m sorry, you can waste your time doing it if you want.
Son the neighbors dog shit in my yard again, I need a legal analysis of owner liability for pet defecation and can you type up a letter of complaint to the local environmental board so I can make a complaint for illegal dumping, you can find out DNA through feces right? I kept a sample so the police crime lab can confirm it is their dog and I want you to contact them and…mom NO, I’m not going to do any of that sorry.
My mom does this too. Only, I’m a nurse, so some of the assignments are…inappropriate. No, Mom, I’m not going to see what the “thing” you saw “there” looks like. I’m not a doctor. I’m especially not your doctor. If you think something is prolapsing, you should call your doctor.
Sometimes I wish I had one of those jobs where family members don’t really understand what it is, like Systems Analyst. Does a Systems Analyst’s mother ever call him to give him systems to analyze on his day off?
You can always let her calls go to voicemail, right?
As far as dog fecal DNA, I remember hearing about an apartment complex that used a DNA registry to police their green space. If a tenant wanted to have a dog, they paid a fee to have the canine’s DNA looked at by a company. Any feces found could be turned in for testing. Big fines if the shit was your dog’s.
I swear my mother has issues with light switches.
My standard trouble call involves the cable box and the TV dissasociating themselves with the remote control.
Or she had managed to get into the standard def stations.
Good thing I’m only 45Km away.
This one wasn’t to me, it was during a period when The Bros were helping Mom with something else so she kept calling them. The whys and wherefores don’t matter, but she needs to switch channels using the TV’s “signal box” rather than the TV’s own channels. During the first month of that setup, there were days she called the Bros two or three times, panicked because “the telly isn’t working! It lights up and displays TV1 and then nothing!”
My brother does that sort of thing. I want you to go to every gun shop and pawn shop in the city and find me a Remington Model ***. Go on the internet and find all references to the family name and write it down for me. No, I have a life, thanks.
My stepmother has no children. Who the hell are you to call my stepmother “Mom”?!?
Seriously, though, I’ve one of those in my family too. Haven’t spoken to her since Jan. '09, though I think the two court cases she brought up against Terminex and the movers have been resolved… against her.
I can top all of these. My mom is elderly and fell in a restaurant. Big bruise. She wisely decides that she doesn’t want to sue. However, she does have dad take pictures of the bruise in case something comes of it much later so that her son the lawyer has the evidence to sue. I must keep the photos of my elderly mom’s hindquarters in my safe. My brother and sister have no idea.
So… young ladies no longer need an Knight in Shining Armor. But the previous generation still needs one, only there it is a Son She Can Set On Everybody Who Will Fight For Her Honour?
I’m suddenly glad my mom got a lawyers insurance so she can get her own lawyers cheap.
My father does something similar. He doesn’t have the Internet, so I’ve become Google-over-voice for him for the last, what, eight years. I even started writing down the weird shit he asks me, like, “Peter, what are chakras? I hear there are a lot of them in Poland.” (Laugh if you must, but he’s not completely insane, as apparently Wawel Castle in Krakow is some sort of chakra nexus.) And, of course, he gives me completely mangled URLs that make no sense, and I have to figure them out for him. I humor him most of the time. Sometimes, I just ignore it, and he forgets about it.
That’s my uncle, except he’s completely insane, and he doesn’t forget about things if I ignore him. Example: he had me get him a free internet ordination, because he heard that clergy are exempt from paying tolls on some road or bridge in Jacksonville, Florida. Mind you, he hasn’t been to JAX in a quarter of a century, and his information is probably outdated and/or wrong, but he’s prepared for next time! He also has me look up Georgia law sections and codes, not so that he can read them right then and there, but so that he can play “Gotcha!” with the superior court clerk. If someone shoots him one day, I won’t be very surprised.
