My grandma sends them $20 checks every year, like clockwork. I feel guilty as hell cashing them now that I AM ALMOST THIRTY, but if I don’t cash them I get a call asking if I got the check. Even though I write actual letters to the dear 94 year old lady regularly. Write letters, I say, because talking to her on the phone is the kind of exercise that if the government did it we’d be calling it “stressful interrogation” or something. You have to shout, and you can’t change the subject. I put newspaper clippings in the letters, by the way. I am nothing if not dutiful.
Zsofia, same exact drill with the birthday checks, but I’m almost 40. The phone call to thank her is so not worth the $20.
“Get off my lawn!”
There, that’s even older and more tired.
I will point out that a BA degree does give you access to many Gov’t jobs, and many Gov’ts are still hiring.
Hey! :mad:
Spoiler box would be too much trouble?
You’ll be old one day unless one of us old 'uns gets to you first.
Now piss off, if I catch you on my lawn again I’ll cut your tits off and feed 'em to the crows
Funny, my mother doesn’t get the concept that I don’t have to “punch in” for work.
<phone rings at 9:15am>
Mom: “You’re late!”
Me: “Mom, for 434th time, there is no ‘late’ where I work. They pay me to do a job. When I do it is my choosing as long as it’s done. That’s the deal.”
Mom: “You’re going to get fired!”
Bless her heart.
Does she at least pay attention to what you are saying? Mom made Lilbro get on the phone with the Grandparents from Hell the other day. This is more or less what his side of the conversation went like:
“hey Gramps, it’s Lilbro.”
“LILBRO”
“LIL BRO. Not Middlebro, LIL BRO.” (their names are as different as could be, by the way; I’ll use normal type from now on but it was all held at top of his lungs).
“How are you?”
“How. Are. You?”
“Oh, by the way, I’ve decided to become gay.” (Mom goes :eek: and starts making ‘what are you doing’ gestures)
“And a zoophilic, I’m buying a handbag dog to screw.”
“A male chihuahua, best go all the way.”
“Hi Grandma, it’s Lilbro.”
“It’s been some time yes.”
“I wonder, do you ever let anybody get a word in edgewise?”
“We might tell you things if you ever shut up, you know.”
“I’m moving to Alaska to become a salmon trainer for Cirque du Soleil.”
“They probably won’t hire me, though, as they don’t work with animals.”
“That’s amazing, Grandma, I didn’t know Barcelona got hot in the summer.”
“Do you think I could become a TV host?”
“Here, Mom, she wants to speak with you :p”
When Mom berated him for it later, he pointed out that we probably could have similar conversations with her, given how much she listens to us. She made the mistake of turning to me for support, which led very fast to a demonstration of how she does, indeed, not listen to a word I say.
My parents are absolutely terrible for embarrassing tenuous-personal-connection-plus-geographical-proximity attempts at social engineering.
Me: I’m going to be in Chicago next week.
My mother: Oh! Tiggy McSplottbags lives there. You must look her up!
Me: Who is Tiggy McSplottbags?
Her: Do you remember Arthur Twiddle?
Me: [Thinks] Arthur who?
Her: Sancha Bastardo’s friend. Tiggy is his cousin’s ex-wife.
Me: Hmm. I don’t think–
Her: I’ve got her phone number here. She’ll be so upset if you don’t get in touch.
Me: Mum, I don’t really do that sort of–
Her: I’ll email her so she knows to expect you.
Tiggy would then turn out to be a deaf old lady who doesn’t have a single thing in common with me and resents my presence.
I experienced one of these ghastly occurrences where a former colleague of my dad lived in the same city as me, and my parents invited him and his wife to dinner at my house when they were staying. The entire evening was excruciating: I didn’t want them there, and they clearly didn’t want to be there either. My parents were in seventh heaven. Needless to say neither I, nor the former colleague, ever contacted each other again.
Do other people’s parents do this, or are mine just extra-specially socially retarded?
A number of times? That much reading must have really chapped your lips.
A sin… telling me to fuck off…
[Rabbi]Telling Sampiro to fuck off… well… it’s not exactly forbidden…[/Rabbi]
but I still say the post you gratuitously snarked on has nothing remotely to do with what you said it did. It is still a sin to kill a mockingbird though, if only in Monroeville.
Completely off-topic but of interest to Harper Lee fans perhaps: I’ve mentioned that I used to help her on the reference desk when I was a librarian at U of AL (though I had no idea who she was other than a quirky, nice, and somewhat butch old lady- once she was identified and the dean and faculty descended on her with offerings of deer and beads she stopped coming around).
Since I just learn that she’s now in a nursing home and her mind comes and goes and since it’s nothing of especial confidentiality or at all controversial or potentially embarrassing in any way, I’ll mention what she was researching. It was old newspapers on the early 1950s (pre- Rosa Parks) murder of a black minister in the Alabama boondocks. The lead suspect (arrested by the sheriff but I don’t think ever indicted) was the husband of a woman he was rumored to be having an affair with, though the minister’s wife claimed it was the KKK. Apparently she never formulated another novel (one with Scout as a lawyer- God that’d be wonderful wouldn’t it?). It’s not at all inconceivable that it was a case (like the one that inspired the “rape” in TKaM) that her father or maybe her sister (older than Harper and still alive and well last I heard) was involved with and that was her sole interest.
Perhaps when she dies her papers (which is why the professors all came running when she was ID’d- they are salivating to get the ones she hasn’t already donated to the NYC public and other libraries) will yield an unfinished novel. Because of copyright laws we’ll all be dead or ancient before anyone can write a “Scout grows up” unauthorized sequel, but that’s probably just as well as it’d probably be Scarletted.
Nope, my mom does this. The thing is, every once in a thousand years, it yields good results, which is all the incentive she needs to do it again in the future.
I’ve solved that particular problem. I’m puttin’ it in my will that whoever does write this must use the proceeds from the sale of the publishing rights to fund time machine research, and when they’re done with that, must send a copy back in time to me so I can read it.
As it happen[s]ed, my copy arrived in the mail last week. The publication date was March, 2236.
Scout does grow up, in fact, and she marries Holden Caulfield. But not before first kicking the snot out of him a few times.
My mother seems to have outgrown that phase, but for about 15 years she kept trying to convince me to go out with the sons of assorted acquaintances of hers. For about five years, that also involved single daughters of widowed acquaintances of hers. I guess she’s finally decided I’m a spinster, not a complete idiot or a lesbian (there are reasons for each of those guys to be single - two of the ones she liked best are now married to other men).
Apparently, two women born less than 5 years apart, both single and both daughters of widows, must have a lot in common, even if one is into SciFi and Fantasy, an engineer, social-democrat-leaning and doesn’t particularly care about this town, while the other one has a law degree, hasn’t worked a single day in her life, lives off the rentals of half a dozen houses she inherited and votes socialist because “they’re the people’s party and I’m very people!” (I’m still trying to understand how can someone be “very people”).
Apologies for the buttload of commas.
When I was in college, she kept trying to get me to contact such or that cousin of hers; Dad would always ask her “you haven’t called your cousin in how long and you want your daughter to do it?” And of course, discovering that I had family in Miami sent her to seventh heaven… my own response was “I move five thousand kilometers to get rid of the family and I have relatives half an hour away? Christ! What have I done to deserve this?”
“It took you HOW many lessons to get a driver’s license? Why, when I got my drivers license, in 1913, all I needed was two lessons.”
I agree with Frank on what he has said here.
And what is old anyway. There are no terms of reference given.
To ridicule the opinions of older folk due to how things happened in their time (assuming they all see it that way) is no different to ridiculing the views of todays young folk because they have no breadth of experience.
As a person who was born in 1930, I can tell you I am not old, just older. Everyone gets older from the time of their birth. He with the most years wins! It is indeed a different world and perhaps your grandparents can see how much harder you have it then when life was more simple.
I feel sorry for the young people now, they are going to have a difficult time, so many have never had it hard, and I hope that some how they will use their talents etc. to make them stronger. I know many people are out of work and their work is not availible to them and some jobs will never come back the same way.
I trust and hope that they will be able to come up with some resources to help them to a better future.
In my family we have a saying that roughly translates as “Old people must be killed in their infancy” (“A los viejos hay que matarlos de chiquitos”)
And the follow up “To stop them from reproducing”
See post 16.
And the particular older person in question in the OP often tries to ridicule the views of todays young folk (in the guise of her daughter, and me, her daughter’s husband) and it’s hilarious. Because she has no idea what she’s talking about. Ever. But she sure knows how to make my wife cry.
“Breadth of experience” my ass. Old people are parochial and out of it and need to STFU.*
*And by “old people” I mean my mother-in-law.
Moved from The BBQ Pit to Mundane Pointless Stuff I Must Share.
Gfactor
Pit Moderator
I don’t think it is. The young haven’t learned yet, the old refuse to *keep *learning. For “old” here, read “calcified”.
The reason no age is given as a cutoff for “old” is that there isn’t one. Some people never get old, and some truly determined people achieve calcification well before middle age.
The years pass at the same rate for everyone, that’s not what makes you old. What makes you old is allowing your world to shrink to the point where new knowledge and ideas and experiences become unwelcome threats to your little fiefdom of complacent “wisdom”.
I went to vist an acquaintance in California. Mom INSISTED I contact her best friend, who lived in a town 20 miles from where I was staying. Mon’s friend was living the good life out there but was probably yearning for a diversion. Mom’s friend would be devastated if I was in the area and didn’t call. Mom’s friend would jump in her car, drive to fetch me and take me out to dinner. Why, it would be immoral and illegal NOT to give her a jingle and inform her that her best friend’s daughter was in town!.. The ‘acquaintance’ flipped out when I told her I wanted to make a “long-distance call”, so I called Mom’s friend and briefly asked her to call me back. ( I handed the acquaintance a $5 bill to cover the costly telephone charge.) She did. Sullenly.
“So you’re in California. You know, this is a long-distance call I’m making to you here.” (How the FUCK much could these long-distance calls COST, anyway? I SAID I’d pay for it!). Two minutes of dull chat about what Mom is up to back home, then, so long, have a good visit. Click. Dial tone.
No “let’s get together while you’re here”. No “let’s meet for dinner in Beverly Hills on Saturday night”. No “so glad you called, what have you been doing on your trip?”.
Yeah, that went real well. :rolleyes: Made me feel real special.