Tell me about your parasitic, self-centered family member and I’ll tell you about mine

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

We have regular family gatherings throughout the year that are fairly large (15-20 people total) and require a good deal of planning, coordinating, and work. Most everyone pitches in cooking, hosting, helping out the host, cleaning up afterwards.

Except for my brother-in-law Dale.

Dale must be assigned a contribution; otherwise he will show up empty-handed. He is typically delegated the easiest task possible; while others are mashing potatoes, baking pies, and roasting turkeys, Dale must swing by the grocery store for a bag of chips.

During the gathering, many are hustling around, setting up tables, putting finishing touches on dishes; Dale finds his way to the most comfortable chair and plops his ass in it.

Dale is the first one to the table when dinner is announced, and the first one finished eating, then back to ‘his’ chair, leaving his dirty dish and utensils on the table. Everyone else remains at the table eating, drinking coffee, and talking.

Afterwards in the family room, the conversation flows: “How is school going?” “How’s your team doing?” “How is Aunt Tillie feeling these days?” Dale’s contributions: “Did I tell you about my last trip?” “Guess where I’m going on my next trip…” and “My boss couldn’t believe how good a job I did on…”

Then, well before anyone has made a move to begin clean-up, Dale stands up, announces he has to go home and do some laundry, and says good night. An hour or two later, we all pitch in to clean up.

And yes, this happens every single time.

Nobody says a word, because, ya know, that’s just Dale.
mmm

2

I have three boys ages 13 to 20. I’d say parasitic and self-centered sums them all up pretty well (especially that youngest one- he doesn’t even have a job!), but that’s the norm for their ages. If they get to 40 and they’re still like this, we’ll have to talk.

3

I have a brother who needs to always be the smartest, most fascinating person in the room. He spouts of the most ridiculous, incorrect statements, then will argue endlessly in the bald face of his own error.

While watching ‘Last of the Mohicans’ he made several comments about the Revolutionary war. When we told him the story was not about the American Revolution, but rather the French and Indian War. He states, ‘Oh, I remember now, this is the Civil War.’

He showed up with an alphorn strapped to his back. We don’t know why really. We were afraid to ask. We really didn’t think it could get worse than him playing his pan pipes with his nose.

Really, you can’t make this shit up.

4

Reading these stories makes me feel lucky I have the family I do. Honestly, everyone is always ready to help and pitch in.

5

I can’t stand my brother-in-law either. Let’s call him shit head.

The world revolves around shit head, all the fucking time. No matter the social situation. He has a beautiful daughter no less than a year old that he’s still nervous about picking up, and guess what? The kid senses it and wails every time he picks her up, sad sight to see.

It would be pittiful under normal circumstances if you didn’t know shit head. But he’s shit head, a self centered cocksucker who’d finds kids and family boring and rather spend his Saturday nights out with the boys at the local pussy bar trying to pick up chicks, except he’s out of luck becuse he hasn’t realized yet that he’s about as attractive as shit on a stick , but would disagree with you about that.

The cocksucker owes my sister an large sum of money who’s sitting on 100x that amount recently but has decided that debt isn’t important to pay back right now, 1 year later. It’s killing me inside to keep my mouth shut and not have a friendly brother talk with him about it.

What bothers me more about shit heads behaviour is that my sister begrudgingly puts up with it. This cocksucker if isn’t cheating on her now, will do it the first chance he gets.

It’s killing me to be civil to this fucktard.

6

My aunt has never lived alone. She lived at home during college, lived at home after she got her first and only job, lived at her parents’ house after she bought a house just down the street from them. A house that she remodeled THREE TIMES. She’s never spent a single night in that house. When her parents sold their old house and moved, she moved with them. When her parents became ill, she kept them home long after they would have received better care and been more comfortable in hospice.

When her mother died, she moved herself into my parents’ house. And there she squats, like a toad on a log, weeping and wailing to my stepfather (her brother) about how every person who ever loved her is dead. Saying that to her own brother, while living in his house without asking him or my mother for permission to live there. (I do not let my parents off for this).

My aunt has systematically collected a web of financial accounts around her. She has been secretly dating the same guy since high school, a guy who was disabled in a car accident. She has control of his disability. She had control of her parents’ Social Security accounts during their lives, and is executor of their will. She had them create a trust so that now that they are deceased, my stepfather’s inheritance is in the trust and under her control. She had a boyfriend that she convinced to sign over his pension and SS checks. She has her own pension and SS checks, of course.

It is really quite astonishing to watch a late-50s woman act as she does.

7

He sounds like a dream boat.

My mother isn’t parasitic, really, but she is self-centered. The thing that makes me ridiculously uncomfortable is when we are at family gatherings that include my mom, my dad, and my stepmother. It used to be that my mom would be sulky and hostile, but when my oldest sister got married, she basically told my mom to cut that shit out and not ruin all of the wedding-related events.

My mom has now completely swung in the other direction. The last family event that included all 3 of them had my mom telling the story of her first date with my dad. Another time she asked my dad to be in a picture with her, my sisters and I.

It’s horribly awkward.

8

I don’t have a stepmother so maybe I’m confused, but what’s weird about taking pictures of two parents and their children?

9

Dale does seem lazy, but it seems a bit demanding to ask guests to help roast turkeys and bake pies. I guess if that’s how things are done in your family, it’s fine but I’d be a little weirded out if someone expected me to help cook if I were at their house as a guest…

10

We hosted Thanksgiving this year.

My brother’s wife is obsessed with what things cost and not for things that she would buy, but just on how much money we make and how we spend our money. We just re-did our basement and I have my gaming computer set up down there. She asked how much it cost and I kind of deflected her (it’s none of her business and she doesn’t even really know how to use a computer, so it’s not like she needs to buy one). Later on, she told me she had looked up the computer on line and wanted to know which options I had on it (I guess so that she could zero in on the cost). WTF!

Then as dinner was beginning, everyone was kind of standing around looking at me and I realized they were expecting grace. I said, “well, we’re atheists, but if someone else would like to say a grace, that would be welcome,” and then I called on one of my religious relatives to say grace. She got upset and went downstairs to have a good cry. When she is saying grace at her place, we lower our heads and try to be respectful, why the fuck isn’t it a two way street when she is in our house?

11

My inlaws do this because only a few people have a house large enough to host in and conveniently located, so everyone brings some food. There isn’t much helping out done on-site, though, except for basic cleanup, dishes, etc., just because we all gather not too long before the meal starts. After a while, it’s not so much getting to host people as having to host them, and some help can be welcome.

12

Yeah, family stuff is usually an “everyone pitches in” thing for us, because it ends up being too many people to have one person host without making the holiday miserable for the host. For Thanksgiving, my husband and I usually help with the night-before preparations because we are from out of town and arrive early, my siblings each bring something, then everyone helps with the last-minute stuff. If someone deliberately avoided any kind of contribution whatsoever, it would stick out like a sore thumb.

13

It just seems courteous to give someone a hand even if they’re doing all the cooking. Little things like setting the table or filling the ice bucket can help out a lot.

14

Growing up, I used to have to go to my grandmother’s house for Thanksgiving and it was chock full of my idiot aunts and uncles and cousins. The litany of stupidity and parasitic self centeredness is too long to write in a single thread, but let’s just say if I had to put up with that side of the family ever again, I would gift them all with bracelets that say “do not resuscitate”.

BTW, 40 years later and those still alive have not changed an iota. So much for the “they will grow out of it” theory.

15

I’m going to remember these things the next time I feel the need to up my eccentricity quotient.

And I can’t imagine NOT bringing a dish and helping out at a big family gathering. If you have even a dozen guests, that’s a big job for just one person, and a big dent in just one person’s budget. In particular, pies can be made ahead of time and will keep for a while at room temperature. Most homes don’t really have the cooking space or oven(s) to manage to have everything ready at the same time. Heck, I’m not sure I would even have enough pots and pans and ovenware to serve twelve people. Besides, it doesn’t seem fair to have one or two people doing all the cooking, while everyone else is watching the football game or whatever.

Now some people are very good at cooking for a crowd, and enjoy it, and would prefer to have everyone else out of the kitchen. But even these people generally appreciate some cleanup help.

16

I think maybe it’s not weird if it were isolated behavior. But it’s kind of impolite to constantly be making comments and requests that reinforce for my stepmother, “I was here first.”

OTOH, my stepmother is perfectly gracious about it, so maybe it’s just me finding fault with everything my mom does. That’s fairly likely, given our relationship.

17

My divorced parents were wonderfully civil at my wedding. I took pictures with my dad and stepmother and I took pictures with my mom and dad. Everyone was gracious and kind to each other.

I have accepted my parents divorce and dearly love my stepmother (and my stepfather who died 3 years ago) but I have to say, I love the picture of me between my two parents. I hadn’t had a picture with me and my mom and my dad in nearly 30 years. My mom’s nose, my dad’s eyes - this is where I came from.

After a fairly acrimonious divorce, it meant a lot to me that all involved could be warm and friendly at the wedding. I also have a lovely shot between my stepmother and my mother - and I love it! Thanks Mom. Thanks Lynne.

18

My youngest brother is approaching 50, and I’m fairly confident in saying he’s never in any year earned more than he’s spent. Instead he’s continually leeched off his mother, middle brother, and now father. He constantly starts businesses (usually gyms or other fitness-related) with no capital, buys into pyramid selling schemes (“supplements”) and needs to be bailed out on a regular basis. He’s totally bought into this “if you believe it you can be it” crap that’s endemic to the fitness industry, and the fact he’s never once run a successful business never seems to dent this - it’s always someone else’s fault, or due to lack of support from his family!

My parents subsidised him out of guilt, I believe, and my brother out of a misguided sense of familial duty. I truly believe he should have been left to go bankrupt once or twice, and so be made to realise he has to go out and get a real job that brings the money in week in and week out.

Before he started in on my mother she lived in a lovely light airy unit on ~20th floor in a nice area. He drained her of money so she had to sell that and buy a smaller unit, no light or air, in a less-nice area - which she foolishly put half in his name. After further draining she was forced to sell again and go to live in a retirement home in a room the size of a shoebox. When she died a few years ago she left a few pitiful items (I could have fitted them in a large car) and (after selling the last unit) a sum of money amounting to maybe 5% of what her assets had been 20 years before.

Meet the famous Marney- rest assured you WILL know what to bring, and how it is to be prepared and presented!

19

Dale sounds just like my brother. He’s a complete moocher.

I come from a big German-Catholic family. Each year, my Aunt Betty host Thanksgiving and my Aunt Mary hosts Easter. We *always *bring a few things… a covered dish, a couple bottles of wine, shrimp, etc. My brother? He brings absolutely nothing. Not even alcoholic beverages. When someone is opening a bottle of wine, for example, he will run over to it with his (empty) glass. And he will sit beside a large plate of finger food (e.g. shrimp) and devour the *entire *plate. He also never lifts a finger to help clean up.

And if being a moocher isn’t bad enough, he has another very annoying habit: breaking into two-way conversations. He will wander around the party, approach two people who are talking about something (anything!), listen for 30 seconds, and then interject. Drives me nuts.

20

That’s really sweet. I love it when people make the best of things for all involved.