I’m in my mid 40s. Married. Good job, fully capable of taking care of myself.
We recently bought a new house partly to reduce commuting, and partly to be closer to my elderly parents. With whom I have a very good relationship.
BUT. Now that we’re closer, I’m realizing how much my dad simply can’t let go, and how much he worries about stupid shit.
-Last summer, he came by while I was mowing the lawn. He reminded me never to stick my hand under the mower deck. I looked at him with the “are you fucking serious?” face.
-I used to live in the country. I’ve used my chainsaw many, many times. If he gets wind that I am doing anything with the chainsaw, he comes over to monitor. And the minute I put the saw down, say to get more gas, he scoops it up because he wants to help. Bullshit. He thinks he’s the only one who can safely use it.
-We make decent money. I’m more willing to pay to have certain things done, or to purchase new for expediency rather than do a half-assed fix on something (as I would have when I was younger and poorer). He was so upset that I was buying a new door to replace one that was wonky (old wooden door was starting to rot) that he came over one day and fixed the door. By bracing it with strips of wood. It looks like shit. The guy will spend a whole day to save $100.
-We went out to eat as a group, and he wanted to stand outside the restroom door while my 10 YEAR OLD NIECE went to the bathroom
And if you push back on any of this, he goes into “fine. I’m just trying to help.” and pouts.
I love the guy, but he needs to chill out. He’s definitely getting worse.
I’ve told my wife that if I turn into this she has my permission to poison me.
My mom is 78. She LOVES The Big Bang Theory and America’s Funny Home Videos. I don’t watch either. In every conversation with her, she goes into great detail about an episode of one of her shows. I think I’ve heard about a Christmas episode of TBBT 10 times now. I have, on occasion, told her nicely that she told me about that already. Then she says very disappointedly, “I did?” And she will then tell me some of the highlights - again. Now she’s also into watching professional hockey and loves our home team, The Wild. I like hockey, but very rarely watch it. She now goes into detail about the players and what happened in a game she watched. We were at my grandson’s mite level hockey game (8 & 9 year-olds) and she actually said, “wow after watching The Wild these kids look really slow.”
But I love her and am glad she’s around and we get along so well. And I’m glad that she has things in her life that she enjoys so much.
My MIL, on the other hand, is a gossipy, bitter, negative woman that I can’t stand to be around. She has no hobbies, she doesn’t watch much TV, doesn’t read books, knows no pop culture of any era so she’s impossible to have a conversation with. What she likes to do is drop in! And then expects to be entertained by us somehow. If she goes anywhere within a 10-mile radius of our house, you can bet she’ll drop in.
She does the same thing to her lady-friends. Her conversations are always negative, downers. She makes nasty comments about people…AAARRRGGHH. Just typing this is giving me anxiety.
So I’ll take TBBT, AFHV and The Wild any day and all day over her.
My mother like to talk… and talk… and talk… and talk… Good luck getting a word in, especially on the phone. If there’s something I need to tell her, I have to interrupt and even then, I risk sending her off on a tangent. And on the rare occasions when she pauses to ask me about my life, pretty much anything I say will set off another monologue.
She’s 85. She’s been like this most of her life. She’ll never change. I just deal with it. Unfortunately, she’s hurt my daughter more than once with this kind of thoughtlessness. She’ll ask her a question, then immediately launch into the latest exploits of my sister’s kids. At least my daughter has one grandmother who will engage with her.
My dad insists on going to the cheapest gas station even if it’s miles out of his way. He once recommended I drive 14 miles out of my way to save 10 cents on ten gallons of gas. It would have cost me a $1.50 in gas to get there, not including my time or the maintenance and depreciation on the car. He will also drag me to three different grocery stores miles away from each other so he can do things like save 50 cents on half a pound of ham at one, $1 on potato chips at another, and 70 cents on bananas at the third. He is retired but still manages to drive 25,000 miles per year mostly on pointless errands that cost him money.
My parents needlessly avoid the doctor. Twisted ankle that she can’t walk on? It will heal. Bandaged foot turning black? It’ll be fine. Three falls in six months? He’ll tell his doctor at his next appointment (which he may just cancel). Heart attack? It’s probably indigestion. My father did go to the ER when he chopped his thumb off with a table saw but there was a surprising lack of urgency when he asked my mom to drive him.
They keep hiring their unqualified neighbor to do work around the house. Shoveling snow and mowing the lawn is fine but he never fixed the stove so they had to just buy a new one. They could have paid a real roofer to redo their garage for way less money, which is great because the roof he installed isn’t waterproof so my parents need to hire a real roofer anyway. Their neighbor’s new wife does make my parents lots of nice baked goods though.
Me: I’m going to the sports bar across the street, there’s a couple of hockey games I want to see.
Mom: Well, I won’t be doing that!
Really?? I thought after 76 years she’d have an epiphany and start watching sports and hanging out in bars!!
I have no idea why she always has to tell me she won’t be watching whatever game I am. It’s not like she spends her evenings watching Masterpiece Theatre, it’s usually the Lifetime Network or the Hallmark Channel.
My mother is in her 90s. She doesn’t drive anymore. When she needs to go to town for anything, I have to take her.
The moment I bought my car, she started cluttering it up with her [del]crap[/del] stuff. Hand lotion. Nail files. Cough drops. A blanket, because 60 years ago, she and Dad once got caught in a blizzard. Lately, she has insisted on taking an umbrella everywhere we go. (We live in the @#$% desert.)
She will cheerfully burn a dollar’s worth of gasoline, driving to three different stores, to save a few cents on a pound of sugar. (But it’s on sale!)
She has diabetes, and a history of high blood pressure. I understand, she has to read the nutritional labels when grocery shopping. She will spend an hour, reading every label on every brand in the store. Then she will buy the same brand that she has been buying for the last 20 years. She will also spend an hour reading labels on stuff that she has no intention of ever buying.
To thank me for taking her, she will take me to lunch. She insists on paying for it. But she insists that I be the one to give the money to the cashier. She thinks I should feel humiliated to be seen in public with a woman paying for my lunch. Then she wants to chisel on the tip.
She grew up in a small town in the Great Depression. That left her with a social inferiority complex. She desperately wants the neighbors to think she is an aristocrat. But, being a child of the Depression, she wants to look like an aristocrat, as cheaply as possible. Which generally doesn’t work.
She is constantly worried about health. She took a few nursing classes 70 years ago, and she thinks she knows more than any of her doctors. She gets a frightening amount of her medical information from late-night talk radio. I am pretty sure she knows that the Bigfoot and UFO stories are nonsense. I don’t know why she thinks the quacks peddling diet books would be any more reliable.
My mother drove me nuts, or at least made me the total wreck I am today. I was the person who got blamed for everything that went wrong, and my younger sister never did anything wrong in her entire life because it was all my fault.
She did bad at school. “Well, those teachers know you and they’re taking it out on her.”
She beat up a kid. “She says you told her to do it or you’d beat her up.”
She lost a job. “You make her so nervous she can’t work.”
Guess what? I’m still here and my sister died in a prison hospital.
Both my parents had some habits/ways that grated with us in the past, but I’ll just point out what drives me nuts about them presently.
My mother ( 78 ) was always a smoker when I was growing up, but quit in the 1980s. She picked it up again; with a vengeance. What irks me is how she tries to BS me about how she smokes “only once in a while”. She’s also a drama queen when it comes to manipulating us to an action she wants. Recently she was in town visiting me for a few days, and for a few hours I showed her around, and then planned to go to a nice restaurant later for a nice dinner. Suddenly, she’s like “I need to eat something right now…I’m beginning to feel dizzy” and made a big speil how she couldn’t wait for dinner. We went to a ‘Publix’ store she saw: well, she went in, I just hung out in the car". 25 minutes later, she’s still not back. Finally she shows up with a small sandwich wrapped in cellophane and a container of macaroni salad. I asked her “long line?”, she said “no…you know me, I like to look around”…but hurry home because we need to eat. Hmmmmm.
We get home and she immediately makes a beeline for my back patio…says she has to make a few calls. I offer to put her food on a plate and bring it out to her. “No no no…thanks…I’ll eat later”. WTF? “Later” in this case is after an hour and 50 minutes of idle chit-chat on her phone - while she chain smoked continuously. She must have a high tolerance to dizziness. Later she finally did pick at the food she bought, and when we went to dinner later, she ate like an anorexic bird. Oh, I should mention: From that first chain smoking episode, she smoked a cigarette every 20 minutes till the time she left a day and a half later.
My father always prided himself as one who could talk anybody into anything ( he worked in sales all his life ), an thinks he’s a great teacher. Really though, he’s not a good teacher at all: No patience. Takes it personally if you don’t pick it up right away, like you’re willfully disobeying him, whether it’s how to swing a golf club, cast a fly fishing rod, aim a pistol; whatever. Pouts and pulls that “Ok OK, just do what you want then…” when in reality it’s hard to master these things right away. His friends say the same exact thing about him.
The lack of awareness of inflation and price changes plagues all older people.
When I was much younger my grandfather was telling me that I should be buying a house instead of paying rent while going to university. He simply had no clue how much housing costs had changed since he bought his home, and had no idea how much university cost.
My parents like to tell stories that go into long detail about people I have never met but who may have met one of my siblings.
They also like to tell me about what’s on the news on TV, even though they know I write the news at that station and they have seen me on camera.
Not a parent (he’s dead now) but had the habit of telling you a story, working his way up to the punch line, delivering it, and then telling you an abbreviated version of the story all over again.
Oh boy. Yeah, and there’s a scary level of over-confidence with older men as they grapple with the fact that they’re not as capable as they used to be.
.
I asked my dad, who was probably 65 at the time, to bring his chainsaw with them when they came to visit because my POS Craftsman had given me enough fits. I had a young elm tree, maybe 8-10" in diameter growing up in my chain link fence and blocking out light from my grass that I wanted to get rid of. I don’t remember if he insisted on doing it, or if I just let him. When it went, it didn’t topple…the tree slipped off the cut and smashed straight down about 6 inches from his foot. Then while he’s trimming off branches, he’s walking around pulling on branches with one hand, holding the idling saw in the other and I swear, swinging it within a half-foot of his leg. Wearing shorts. I just knew I was going to have to run in the house for towels to use as a compress while somebody else dialed 911.
My mom’s always had a habit of prodding me to express emotions the way she does. She is very demonstrative.
Suppose a grandchild runs by. She’ll say, “You really love that kid, don’t you? I bet he’s the light of your life. Isn’t he? Isn’t he?” She expects an answer to this question. Whatever my feelings about said kid, I don’t wish to give them on demand.
Other times she’s just plain getting it wrong. “Oh, don’t you hate the way so-and-so sings? It’s horrible, right? Don’t you think so?” Well, uh, no I kind of like it.
I don’t know if I’m giving good examples here, but I frequently feel pestered.
This is more silly than infuriating, as it doesn’t really have anything to do with me but…
My dad refuses to watch TV with black bars on the side or top of the picture. So he stretches everything to 16:9 even if it’s supposed to be 4:3. He watches a lot of older shows, like Andy Griffith, so his TV is always in stretch mode. Every actor looks short and fat. Every screen graphic is slightly off screen.
When he first got a 16:9 tv he drove me nuts trying to get me to fix it because nothing was showing the right size. It took me weeks of fighting with the HDMI to realize that it was working properly, he just didn’t like the black bars.
“I paid for a 49-inch screen, I want my shows to fill up the screen.”
“Remember when you kids got braces? You sister had to have a tooth pulled before she got hers.”
“I remember that. I had seven teeth pulled before I got mine.”
“You did?”
When I was a teenager I came up with the the theory that Norman Lear knew my father and based the character of Archie Bunker on him. He wasn’t really that bad, but he was always making racist remarks.
Man, that’s the truth. Working in auto sales as I do, the worst customers in that vein are older truck buying men. They simply cannot fathom that their 1998 truck was $25,000 21 years ago and now that truck is $50,000 (or more).
I have a theory that Norman Lear knew my college friends and based the Meathead on them. You know, the world owes me a living while I goof off; meanwhile the older generation is hard at work.
