I love that commercial! I have absolutely no idea why, I just do. (And it’s not just the dog, either) Maybe it’s because we just don’t get to use “bugger” as an effective oath on this side of the globe.
I must be incredibly lucky to have had parents that had very little interest in baby pictures or embarassing anecdotes. My father will spout one off every now and then but it’s usually relevant and it’s rarely very embarassing – usually it’s just kinda amusing in that “kids will be kids” sort of way.
Which is probably just as well, considering what a little shit I was in my pre-adolescent years…
One of the things my father aklways said was:
“I remember when he wouldn’t eat meat!”
…referring to some long-ago vegetarian phase I evidently went through as a toddler. I certainly don’t remember it – I’ve been eating meat in some form my whole recollected life. Why he kept bringing this up, decades after the fact, never understood.
Now that I’m a parent, I have to admit to something similar, although, in my defence, there’s at least a scintilla of a reason.
MilliCal, our now-eight-year-old daughter, refuses to eat peas. But at an earlier age, she loved peas. Not being able to have peas as a vegetable dish (or at least, having to prepare some other vegetable as well as peas for the meal, because we want to shove some variety of green vegetable into MilliCal to balance out her nutrition) gets us annoyed, especially when we recall that it wasn’t so very long ago (to us) that she was scarfing them down. So we say, in exasperation, that she used to love peas. To which MilliCal responds “Mom/Dad, stop saying that!” But it’s the frustration, and the extra effort, talking. My parents didn’t have that excuse, since I was eating more variety than when I was younger.
(For the record, I don’t recall even being served peas as a kid, even during my “vegetarian” phase. And MilliCal always ate meat.)
Rilch, you don’t know how lucky you are. My mom likes to tell everyone the story of how I used to, uh, touch myself at inappropriate times. The last time, I told her how much that really upsets me and I don’t think the whole world needs to know about it (except of course, for all my dear friends on the Internet.) She agreed not to bring it up again but she was giggling the whole time and I know what she really meant is, “I’ll only bring it up behind your back every couple of months from now on.”
My mother does the same goddamn thing. I can’t stand the taste or smell of fish, and haven’t been able to for as long as I can remember, but every time the subject comes up and I have the occasion to say, “I don’t like fish”, my mother will get his sad little look on her face and say, “But you liked it when you were a baby…” I have no real reason for being annoyed by it, but she always made it sound suspiciously like, “How dare you grow up on me!”
One time when I was about thirteen, we were in a restaurant and she said that, to which I responded, “I also used to shit myself when I was a baby. Do you want me to keep doing that?!” I hoped that would shut her up for good, but she still slips it in from time to time. So if I were you, I’d stop saying that to your daughter. It’s a complete waste of time, and it obviously annoys her. She’s not so little that she’s not allowed her own food preferences, and kids’ tastes change, just like adults’ tastes do.
Is it possible that your Mom is secretly proud of you being rude at that age? Maybe, just maybe, she thinks you showed up the snootyness of those arround you?
It’s not my mom but when an old friend embarrassed me with a personal story (after being told repeatedly I was not comfortable with him doing that) I just waited until he finished, then I followed with an amusing anecdote about his mistress and his divorce.
Never heard that story about me again.
My brother had a speech impediment as a kid, so some sounds came out wrong. My mom brought up the words he used to say wrong (ketchup was keppets and his favorite restaurant was Red Losper) all the time. That would be cute if he hadn’t suffered the stigma of speech therapy for years and been made fun of for it. He talked to her and she finally relented.
I learned to read very early, so many words I’d read I’d never heard out loud. My mom’s favorite story is when I mispronounced moccassins as mo-cause-ins. I’m 27 and they still bring it up, even though I’ve told them many times how much it hurts my feelings. They’ve stopped now as I burst into tears one time they told the story.
My mom had a terrible mother, who was mean and denigrating (she would introduce my mom, her only daughter) as “my fat daughter”. Evil woman. But, we can tell my mom that she’s got “grandma tendencies” and she’ll stop whatever she’s doing that makes her like her mother. It’s good for everyone.
Hi, Dung Beetle, I forgot to wish you a happy Easter. Apologies.
The very next time I meet your mom, I’ll cover my ears. And apologize for erasing two *very important * words. (Look 'em up, heathens!). Your mom is a treasure, dear. Tell her I said so. There’s little enough time to amass funny stories about your relatives: don’t let their shortcomings squeeze things any tighter.
“Used to”, guys, “used to” were the words. I screwed it up on purpose, for a cheap joke, and now I feel bad about it. Sorry, Dung Beetle, and hope to see you at an appropriate time.
One of the stories my mother likes to tell is how, when I was learning to read (probably 5 or so), saw a Cadillac El Dorado next to us in traffic and very carefully sounded out, “El…Door…A…Doo. That car is an El Door A Doo.”
My mother still brings that one up and I’m 41. If we’re out together and see one, she’ll point it out and say, “Look, an El Door A Doo!”
Yeah, it’s stupid, but it hurts my feelings. Maybe I should burst into tears next time and she’ll stop doing it.
My word was “stiletto,” pronounced: Still A Toe. Hilarious, right? Not really. But I can’t imagine I’d ever break down crying about it or why it would ever even hurt my feelings. Are you guys super-sensitive?
You were four. Nothing that you did when you were *four * reflects on your thirtysomething year old self one way or the other.
And if your mother is really repeating it over and over, likely to the same people, then I assure you that none of them are thinking anything about you. They’re really bored, or worried that your mother is getting senile, or both.
You’re tired of hearing it, and I get that, and sympathize. But frankly, you’re the one making it a drama by getting upset about it every. single. time. Sometimes “ignore it and it will go away” really is good advice.
I’m not super-sensitive - believe me, I can blow stuff off as well as anyone.
It’s just … I don’t know. This bothers me for some reason.
It happened when I was five for crying out loud. It’s stupid. Why bother bringing it up now, over and over again? She just harps on it. And these little stories about stuff I did when I was a kid or in high school are just dumb, and designed to embarrass me.
If you had an embarassing story about a family member or friend that you knew they [ihated*, would you continue to tell it in their presence?
Apparently, when I was about four, at an outdoor family gathering, in cold weather, I took off my clothes and ran around nekkid.
To this day, every Thanksgiving or Christmas, if someone mentions that it’s cold outside, my uncle relates this story. And he doesn’t just tell it, he acts it out. He keeps his clothes on, thank Christ, but he runs around in a circle waving his arms around like a little kid.
I love my uncle, I really do, but I swear to God, one of these days I’m going to punt that Spanish midget right in his ass.
Mia and Granddad were renovating the room that my three uncles shared while they were growing up. This of course, meant sawdust, paint, tarps, the works. We were coming over for a barbeque or some such thing with the WHOLE extended famdamnily second cousins, great aunts, everybody. Somehow, my Mom had me by the hand, and we walked into the room (presumably to check it out or something) and we were standing in the doorway of it with EVERYONE standing behind us.
This two year old took a look around the room, turned around to the family with hands on hips, and quite incredulously stated, “This room is a GOD DAMN MESS!”
To this day, that room is known as the “GD room”
My Mom lurrrves that story, and I gotta say it still makes me laugh, too. But maybe because I DO see that as a defining point of my personality. I love to swear. I don’t remember what trouble I got in for it. It must have been big, because my Mom at the time was the type of person to turn absolutely purple at the idea of one of her spawn causing her such an unforgivable indignity. Seriously, I have no idea how she lived with it at the time. She’s mellowed considerably!
For anyone wondering, that sort of thing would never have been my Mother’s fault. That was all Dad.
But that’s the whole point–it doesn’t go away. It is still here, upfront and personal, frequently.
I don’t have too many of these (I was basically ignored, which turns out to be a good thing, really), but my brother…Poor thing, one year when he was like 12, he was very hungry at Thanksgiving dinner and he emptied the entire dish of cranberry sauce onto his plate. Oh, the mirth!
Now, he had been taught to not be greedy etc, but thing is, no-one else was eating the damned stuff. And everyone else had been served–and took their token teaspoon of it.
EVery fricking Turkey Day, this 46 year old man is regaled with this character defining moment. People feint passing the cranberry sauce to him and then ask coyly if he can refrain from over-indulging this year etc.
Oy–it didn’t even happen to me and I’m sick of it.
I don’t know why some relatives do this–it’s rude as hell in my book. I understand that anecdotes etc can be a way of sharing family history and forging bonds, but this is a bit ridiculous. I hope I don’t do this to my kids.
