My parents pale in their irritation level next to this. I feel lucky.
Of course, Dad wants to divorce my mother and… get this… buy a house with me.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I am not becoming a sitcom.
I just don’t understand how people can tolerate this stuff. I know it’s a Doper meme, the whole “not understanding universal things,” like “How do socks work” or “Why do people watch TV,” but damn, dude. I love my family, but I do not have the time, energy, or desire to deal with that shit, regardless of familial connections.
If my father acted and spoke in such a manner, I’d never contact him again. If he called me, I’d let him prattle on until he hit one of my buttons, then I’d hang up. I am sure that the presence of children in the equation muddies things up, but we’ve all seen family drama threads that don’t involve kids, and it’s the same old shit, different poster.
Do you think maybe you shithead qualities may have something to do with the relationships described?
I’m sorry to hear about your troubles. This conversation just got really real.
But yes, congrats for the promotion. Good luck with everything.
That’s what my dad said when mom died! He even offered to buy us a house and live in our basement. Me and my SO were collectively :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:
I’m guessing that having a sit-down dinner party with a pre-set guest list that can’t accommodate unannounced drop-ins is something that only white people do.
This is also something in Indian culture, though. You never turn away someone who comes to your door, whether you expected him or even if you know him (so long as he’s vouched for in some way). And you always make room at the table for unexpected company. And you never say no to your parents.
I’ve never heard a white person say “'flicted”. I’m 99% sure that none of the ones I know even know what it means.
I picture your father to be like Ozzy Davis’s character from “Jungle Fever”. Try not to shoot him while doing a crackhead dance, okay?
When you refer to it as a “standard” Sunday afternoon visit, it doesn’t sound like something you are “happy” to do.
No his sister called him a self hating nigger. I thought this was an extreme reaction just for not letting his father up - so I wondered if maybe the dinner party only consisted of white people? or non black people?
I was wondering what type of ammunition provided could she refernce being self hating.
I’m black and we have dinner parties. But growing up there were no pre set guest lists. You just showed up and brought some liqour. The South.
does your dad or his ‘Female Friend Whom I Refuse To Call My Girlfriend Though She Obviously is’ have any food allergies or strong food dislikes? say those are on the menu when ever he tries to invite himself over.
also when you talk, on phone or intercom, to your dad and he tries to invite himself or his ‘Female Friend Whom I Refuse To Call My Girlfriend Though She Obviously is’ over then play what they consider the devil’s music loud in the background and say that will be playing the whole time.
I think he is a self hating nigger in sister’s because he didn’t marry a black chick (or she’s half-black, I can’t remember).
I mean I’ve been called things for not marrying a Hindu/Indian - some nasty things, too.
Yeah, me too.
Yeah, me too. I’ve seen it, but just collected meaning from context.
Well, I would, but I’m not sure how to say it. There’s nothing I hate worse than mispronouncing jive. 
It isn’t jive. Anyway, here’s the /sə•dɪ•ti/. Primary accent on the second syllable, secondary on the third; suh•DIH• tee.
Half-black. And I don’t think that’s it. Crazy Sis would likes my wife (or, if she doesn’t, affects to so ably that neither of us can tell) say that my wife is more authentically black than I because she’s culturally more black than me. Likes gospel music, likes rap, identifies as black despite being as pale-skinned as that girl on NCIS whose name I don’t know. Whereas I like classical music and show tunes and occasionally jazz.
Okay, and Madonna. 80s/90s Madonna, anyway. I do not know what she looks like now and anyone who posts of picture of 2013 Madonna will be beaten with a stick.
Gimme the names of the name-callers and I will of course slap them for you. Unless they’re girls. You know the RhymerRules.
I don’t know his girlfriend’s food tastes; I’ve never cooked for her. Dad has, incidentally, complained that I never have collar greens available at my house, which is the case because I hate collard greens so I never cook 'em. (I don’t know why anybody would want to eat collar greens I’d made anyway. Why would they be any good?)
It was not letting my dad up that my sister deemed the great sin. She has no idea who was at the party, as she wasn’t there and wasn’t told of it.
I do regret having to flat-out tell Dad he couldn’t come up; it does bother me. But I’ve dealt with him enough in 43 years to know that, given the time constraints, I wasn’t going to be able to do what I needed done with him there, and that furthermore I was going to have to at some point ask him to leave before the party began, or else have a completely different party than was promised the actual invitees.
Oh, hell, tons of things. F’instance, one day last week we were both visiting Dad at the same time, and she asked me the last name of some young black girl who won a gold medal in the Olympics. I looked at her blankly and said “I have no idea who you’re talking about,” and she insisted I must know but was deliberately pretending not to know because…
:: takes breath ::
Never mind.
The crazy sister still thinks that my wife, our baby, and I should move in with Dad. She can’t imagine believe that we both consider owning of a yard a negative, not a positive.
I think the basis of the problem (apart from the old man’s general orneriness) is that none of the other Rhymers have a problem with showing up unannounced. My older brother is, I assure you, at least twice the man I am: more successful in his career, nicer, in better shape, blah blah blah. I don’t mean that to be critical; I admire him and aspire to be like him. But he still thinks nothing of showing up without warning, which in his case means flying across country and renting a car. He has the good grace to not complain when I’m not willing to reschedule my plans because of his surprise visits, but the notion of setting things up ahead of time just doesn’t seem part of his or any of my siblings DNA.
Maybe I got it from the Christian Brothers, I dunno.
As I wrote upthread, I love my dad but don’t like him. I’m not willing to initiate a serious estrangement. I wasn’t even estranged from my mother, but because I was improperly focused on work I was not present when she died, and that fact has eaten at me for nearly seven years.
Asian Indian, or some variety of American Indian?
I hope I don’t seem racist when I say that that custom seems just a way to submit to rudeness by others. Anyway, you’re right that my sister is complaining about my refusal to submit to a black Southern cultural norm. But I still contend that the far greater rudeness was Dad’s, as he was not merely inviting himself to the party but inviting a guest as well. And I guarantee you that, if I’d let him and his not-girlfriend come, he’d have insisted that the two people sitting in the kitchen be two of the women.
And of course his presence would have utterly changed the tenor of the party. No postprandrial drinking games, for instance. Much less flirtation between the two girls being set up. The post-dinner movie would have had to change …
Before I abandoned writing for corporate sellouthood, my friend & agent read a novel I’d written and, because we’re friends, felt free to say, “Okay, I don’t want to seem racist here, if for no other reason that I don’t want you to punch my husband in the face–but what the hell do ‘flicted,’ ,‘saditty,’ and ‘you must not believe that fat meat is greasy mean’?” 
[Temperance Brennan]
I don’t know what that means.
[/temperance brennan]
I am. Dad’s not all bad, as I said, and I want to make sure he eats more than microwave dinners & take-out, and I like to cook, and it’s what my mother would have wanted.
But part of the reason I visit on a set schedule is that it allows me to control things. By visiting him at his house, I make sure that I can leave whenever I feel like it.
Well, shit. Where do I turn in my card?
I’m talking about the best scene from “Jungle Fever”.
I thought the Doper meme was to always “dump the motherfucker” immediately. No matter how little of an issue it is or what’s involved. But maybe that’s just me.
By the way Skald, my heart goes out to you. I’m in a similar position with my mother and although it would be in my best interest to divorce myself from her, I won’t do it either. Hopefully, we’ll both survive not too terribly scathed.
I liked the footnotes a lot. Feetnotes? 
Was this the first time you stood up to your dad? I’m really glad you’re setting up boundaries and reinforcing them (I’d say I’m proud of you, but that sounds condescending). I’m in the process of doing the same thing with my mom (although she isn’t nearly as horrible as your dad, so it’s not apples-to-apples). Even so, it’s rarely easy. Butbut, it’s actually *working *for me. Glad it also seems to be working for you. 
IMO, life is much sweeter when you limit the amount of chaos that crazy people can cause. Even if they happen to be the crazy people who gave birth to you. >.>
Oh man! I’m so sorry.
I’m now feeling thankful the the worst I have at the moment is that my mom can’t seem to remember when I’m working or volunteering at the shelter (same schedule every week for ages now) and calls me at work to chat.
I love that thread!
Way back in 1988 when mrAru and I were living in Portsmouth VA and his boat was in the shipyard, my parents came down to Virginia to visit, it was going to be sort of prolonged as they were still rebuilding their house and planned to stay for at least 2 weeks.
They got to their hotel friday evening and called to make saturday plans. I told my mother that mrAru and I would meet them at their hotel and we would go somewhere for breakfast. Bright and early saturday morning my parents showed up on our doorstep and insisted on coming in. So I grabbed my keys, my bail out bag and departed for a motel for the next couple of days. It was the first time I finally managed to get my parents to treat me like an adult and respect my desire for privacy. [back when I lived up in Rochester NY and was half an hour from them, they would drop over all the damned time. Drove me fucking nuts.]
Maybe he doesn’t want to be alone at his age…? 
Indian Indian, not Native American.
Well that’s the thing. In that culture, it’s not rude to show up unannounced. It’s the other way around. It’s rude to turn people away.
It’s also considered weird to have any kind of social occasion in the home that would be inappropriate for children, parents, grandparents, and their friends and acquaintances who happen to show up. It’s a whole different cultural context because home is for everyone. There are usually at least three generations of people living in a house and you can’t exclude anyone who is right there. If you want to do adult things with people your age, you go out.