And I have no idea if my mom’s telling it to other people. If she is, BFD. I don’t have to hear it then. I do have to hear it when she tells it to me.
Look at it this way. Suppose you worked in a warehouse. And suppose, during your first year on the job, you overloaded a forklift and it tipped over. And you didn’t get fired for it, and your boss eventually calmed down, but he didn’t forget. And suppose you had to keep hearing about it.
And the first few times, you’d figure it was like your penance, so you laugh with him. But by the time you’ve worked there twenty years, and you’re a foreman, and have contributed a great deal of good work to the job, and you’re still hearing about it, that would really suck. “New guy today…Hope he doesn’t tip over a forklift like you did…Remember?” As if you could ever forget. Because he won’t let you.
And there are plenty of stories that don’t bother me. Like the time I picked a “booquit” for my mom on Mother’s Day, or the time, on a tour of Mount Vernon, I raised my hand and said, “Servants’ cabins? You mean slave cabins!” My mom and I both think that’s hilarious, because there was an audible gasp from the other tourists, and the tour guide looked like she wanted to crawl under a rock – but it was true! George Washington did keep slaves; why sugarcoat it? I don’t even mind the anecdote about the time I swore up, down and sideways that I was not going to mess up my brand new, pale green linen dress…and then proceeded to drop a French-dressing laden lettuce leaf off my fork and alllllll the way down the front of it. But when she tells the Bad Word story, she just has such a nasty tone that’s absent in all the other stories. And again I say, she told it twice in a week.
Or it may be, and I’m reaching a bit here, but at that time, our family was highly dysfunctional (not that we’ve ever been fully functional, but at that time it was really bad) and presenting a facade. I was the one who tipped our hand. Perhaps she’s secretly proud of me for that. Or really mad at me for blowing our cover.
My mom definitely has a passive-aggressive streak that’s a mile wide, so I know that’s her problem. Like eleanorigby said in her earlier post, it just never goes away. Shut the fuck up, already.
My grandfather, always has to tell this story of when I was about two or three years old. My other grandfather was Hungarian-Slovak, and so my dad’s two brother-in-laws, my Uncle Bob and my Uncle Craig would always tease me when I came to family gatherings by saying, “Hey, it’s the little hunky!”
Now, they didn’t mean it as a slur-hell, Uncle Bob is pretty much known as the Polack, etc. That sort of thing. But I had no earthly idea what it meant, and I was so sick of it I just spat back, “I’m not a hunky-I’m a SUPER HUNKY!” And stomped off.
And my grandfather STILL won’t stop telling it. Of course, considering what a bastard he is otherwise, I suppose that’s one of the least objectionable things…
Actually, I didn’t get upset and create a drama. I don’t believe I ever have. I asked her, in a reasonable tone of voice, why she insists on continuing to tell that story. That’s not drama. It was to the same end that I placed this thread in MPSIMS instead of the Pit. I’m sorry if you’re offended by my offense.
My aunt for “some reason” (I’m not sure what it was, but I can sort of guess) got married at 15. This was NOT what her good Methodist parents had in mind for her.
When the anniversery of this failed marriage came for the 50th time, and her mother brought it up again, she finally told her mom that she’d had enough of that story, and that it was time to let it go. Surprisingly, it worked.
