My mother and grandma visit me a few hours from their homes to deliver some stuff before mother moves to an apartment after a divorce . I let it slip that my housemate/sibling by choice is poly. My GRANDMA of all people shut my mother down when she started moaning about it. We are limiting people allowed inside our apartment because of high risk. Mother was complaining.

I said “We weren’t even letting housemate’s other partner in.”

The person who drove her husband to leave her after almost 30 years with her gambling, verbal abuse, (and other things tbh) sure lost it about someone else having 2 successful relationships at once.

Grandma, who still struggles with they/them pronouns and nonbinary (housemate is also nonbinary which mother accepts no problem) “Shut up, Its not for me but they are consenting adults.”

mother: ” When you love someone you don’t bring a third person in”

Grandma: “Maybe there is no love and it’s just sex”.

That is not true but was hilarious hearing GRANDMA say it with such fervor.

[My English class has just finished reading the poem “Porphyria’s Lover,” in which the narrator strangles the titular Porphyria with her own hair.]

Classmate: “Wait, he KILLS her?!”

Me: “How did you miss that? He spends the entire last third of the poem cuddling her dead body!”

My parents don’t like their respective in-laws. To the point where they’ll make any excuse to avoid meeting up with them. Like, I doubt my dad has met my maternal grandparents in half a decade, and my mom is the same.

Now, my paternal grandmother is one thing, being horrid and unpleasant. My Dad once told me that she’s, and I quote: “too hateful and spiteful to die”. She’s the type of person who apparently grew more unpleasant over the years, and her personality is allegedly why all of her children live overseas.

But I never understood why my Dad doesn’t like my maternal grandparents. They’re considerably nicer people, objectively speaking. While both had their flaws and prejudices, they’ve mellowed out considerably once grandchildren began popping up.

Me: *to my mom* “So why is it Dad doesn’t like Grandpa and Grandma? They’re so nice.”

Mom: “Male pride mostly. He’s used to being the man of the house, as the only (and most successful) son, so he doesn’t like that my parents treat him with far less respect than he’s used to.”

Me: “You don’t treat him with much respect either.”

Mom: “When we got married I was a lot more deferential. Raising you nearly by myself with a full time job got rid of that.”

Dad mostly left me to Mom to raise. And left the domestic stuff to her as well.

Mom: “He’s also very annoyed that in the past quarter of a century, my parents only complimented him once.”

Me: “That is just so petty. So what was the complement anyway?”

Mom: “Well…”

Fifteen years ago…

Grandma: *holds newborn me for the first time* “He’s so cute.” *looks at my Dad* “He looks like you.”

Back to the present.

Mom: “That was the closest thing to a compliment he ever got from my parents.”

Me: “Note to self: Never be as petty and narcissistic as Dad.”

Me: “well you know what they say, there are 11 types of people in the world. Those that don’t understand binary, those that sort of understand it, and those like me that are truly 0001001100110111.”*
Friend: “that isn’t how the joke is suppose to go, and I don’t think those were even letters.”
Me: “Technically true, but I’m using half size bytes to cut out all the extra zeros.”
Friend: “okay what was the binary again?”
Me: “0001 0011 0011 0111” **

My friend thinks for a second while he ‘translates’, then gives a groan.

Friend: “You are such a geek, even for here!”
Me: “It’s not my fault you lack my elite skills.”
Friend: “wait, did you memorize that whole binary sequence just so you could tell that terrible joke?”
Me: “umm..I plead the 0101?” ***

*11 is how you write 3 in binary, this is a bastardization of a well known joke about there being 10 types of people, those that understand binary and those that don’t

** For the none geeks a half-byte means ever 4 sets of 0 and 1 made up a unit. In this case if you read the binary as numbers you get the number 1337. Which is ‘leetspeak’ (where numbers replace letters that look like them) for the word “leet”. Leet is a bastardization of elite used for bragging about technical skills etc. Even us geeks don’t use leet or leetspeak remotely seriously, you really should be embarrassed for me that I would ever make such a terrible joke.

*** That’s plead the fifth if you haven’t guessed.

When I was in high school, back in the late 90s/ early 2000s, there was a year where my dad took me to school most mornings, before his job changed. We would stop at the Burger King by the highway to grab a breakfast sandwich at least once a week, and we ordered the same thing every time.

Dad: Hi, I’d like 2 egg and cheese croissants and 2 orange juices, please.

Cashier: 2 Bacon, egg, and cheese croissants-

Dad: No, just egg and cheese. No meat.

Cashier: …No meat?

Dad: No meat.

We had some Version of this conversation almost every time we stopped there, whether we went inside or through the drive thru. We always had to double check our food, because half the time they still gave us meat! What’s wrong with no meat?