Uh...Did you just tell her to shut up?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

My mom is a nut about Watergate. Knows every detail, every name, could probably recite the whole timeline. Has every book on the subject, including Maureen Dean’s memoirs, owns DVDs of All the President’s Men, Secret Honor and Nixon (but not Dick)…You get the picture.

So naturally, I called her as soon as I heard about Deep Throat. She’s visiting with my cousin “Debbie” right now, and Debbie’s husband. So I called RilchMom on her cell.

Oh yeah, she already knew about it. No, she’d never thought it was Diane Sawyer. She’d figured it was someone in the FBI…“Shut up.”…Someone had spelled Ben Bradlee’s name wrong…

“Hey, is that Debbie with you?”

“Yes. We’re at [store], getting some…”

“Why’d you tell her to shut up?”

“Because I can’t talk to her and talk to you at the same time! She wanted to know who it is…”

“Just tell her it’s Rilchie and I wanted to talk about Deep Throat.”

“Okay…It’s Rilchie and she wants to talk about Deep Throat…What? She says hi, and are you and Mr. Rilch still going to the Comic Con?”

“Yes, we are.”

“Yes, they are. So anyway, no, I never believed Deep Throat was a composite. Though I’m surprised it’s Felt; I guess they made the smoking thing up…”

See, the thing is, my mom can be very difficult sometimes. I don’t have time to tell all the stories right now, but some of you probably remember some of them. Suffice to say, she loses her shit over the tiniest thing. But when Debbie and “Gary” visited LA a few years ago, they went out to lunch while I was at work, and when I came back, my mom had this charming story about how they’d tried to find a certain place for lunch “but Mr. Rilch’s directions were terrible” and they’d had such a great time driving around and getting lost, and finally found another place to eat…

“So how come you can’t make the best of things when you’re with me?”

“Because you don’t.”

Now, at the time, I chalked that up to a phenomenon that someone once outlined on the boards. One poster had asked, “How come my three-year-old behaves so well for Grandma and Grandpa, but not for me?” The other poster had a theory about danger signals, and how when the kid’s mom noticed, say, a quaver in the kid’s voice, she immediately went on guard, the kid would respond, and it was off to the races.

So I figured that was what it was: Debbie’s not attuned to my mom’s danger signals, so she doesn’t respond as I do, and penis does not ensue. But now I think it might only be partly that. At the time I was talking about, RilchMom was just getting reacquainted with Debbie after not having seen her since she was a teenager. (She’s 6 or 7 years older than I am; I’m 35.) Now, though, she’s not on her best behavior any more, and she doesn’t exercise the same control she did earlier.

So that’s how it is. But I couldn’t let that go unaddressed. Debbie does not deserve to be told to shut up; she’s a terrific person, and she has enough to deal with from her own (mentally ill) mom. You can take a lot from a mom, but I don’t think you should have to take much from an aunt.

2

Rilch, Debbie knows how your mom is and probably doesn’t let it bug her. I have several relatives who have zero social graces including my dear mother and grandmother. You learn to let their ill-mannered comments roll off your back because it’s just the way they are.

3

I don’t see anything wrong with telling someone else to shut up while you’re talking on a cell phone. Or am I missing something in the story?

4

Do you just go around saying “shut up” to people? The mind boggles. “I’m sorry, Deb, this will just take a minute,” is acceptible. “Shut up,” is not.

“I’d love to talk to you about this Rilch, but I’m shopping with Debbie. Can I call you back in a half hour?” would be even better, IMHO, but I don’t want to hijack.

Rilchiam, let me see if I understand you. You’re saying that if you were in Debbie’s place and had asked your mom who was on the phone, and she’d been annoyed at you and snapped “shut up” at you, you would have picked up on the annoyance in her voice, and also been mad, and would have responded negatively and then your mom would have gone off? But Deb didn’t pick up on her annoyance and didn’t respond negatively to it, so there was no blow-up? Interesting idea.

I guess it is annoying when you’re annoyed by something, and then somebody gets mad that you’re annoyed. If you know what I mean. But if nobody bothers you about it, you just forget it.

5

Well, “shut up” is pretty harsh and dismissive. I can’t think of the last time I used it on someone. I’m pretty sure I’ve never used it on a relative in my adult life.

6

Well, it depends how you say it. Obviously if you snarl and spit while saying it, it would be offensive, but it’s certainly possible to deliver a good-natured “shut up” to someone you’re friendly with.

7

True - it all depends on the tone of delivery. Reading in to the OP, I assumed the delivery was more the harsh and dismssive type than good-natured.

8

Exactly.

Yes, it would be better. But that would simplify things, and she’s not into that. :dubious:

It’s not one instance of “shut up” that causes friction between my mom and other people. Little things add up. My sister “Cindy”, with absolutely no input from me, has done a 180 in her opinion of our mom since the two of them have been living a 15-minute drive apart.

I don’t know how the visit has been going, but I do know that my mom is very high strung, not given to much compromise, and not keenly aware of how she comes off. One instance of RilchMom crabbing because the parking space is too far from the entrance does not ruin a vacation. But if it’s that, plus her asking the waitron if the restaurant can turn down the air conditioning, plus griping about the car radio, plus seeing a Bush sticker on a car and grumbling about it for five minutes, plus griping about the sun but refusing to put on sunscreen “because it clogs your pores”, plus picking an argument with my dad over who knows what, plus INTERRUPTING whoever, whenever, for whatever reason, yadda yadda yadda, can gradually turn things sour. Cindy and I have to put up with that, but Debbie made a generous offer, and there’s no need to make her regret it.

And the heart of the matter is that, even out of context, “shut up” is rude, and I didn’t like her saying that to my cousin. I didn’t make a scene; I merely said, “Why’d you say that?..Just tell her it’s me.” I think I handled it properly, whether you think it was something to get upset about in the first place or not.