CONTENT WARNING: Animal Neglect

My husband and I went away for a week. I agreed to pay my younger sister (age twenty-seven) $100 to drive fifteen minutes to my house once a day, make sure my two cats had food and water, and empty the collection bin on their automatic litter box. I checked in with her every day, and she assured me all was well.

When we came back, the cats had no food and no water, and their litter box was so full that it had stopped cleaning. But the $100 I’d left for [Sister] was gone. So, I called her. 

Me: “Uh, hey. What happened here? Did you not take care of my cats?”

Sister: “Well, [Her Husband] and I decided to go out of town, too.”

Me: “Okay… And the cats?”

Sister: “What about them?”

Me: “You were supposed to be taking care of them.”

Sister: “I did. I stopped by before we left.”

Me: “When were you here last?”

Sister: *Defensive* “I don’t know!”

Me: “What do you mean, you don’t know? I paid you to stop here every day. I want my money back.”

Sister: “Well, I would have, but we changed plans.”

Me: “And you should have told me that before, so I could arrange for someone to care for them. Are you f****** kidding me right now?”

Sister: “What? They’re fine. We came by the day after you left and did what you wanted. What’s the big deal?”

Me: “So, you came by for like fifteen minutes, took the $100, and that’s all you did?”

Sister: “They’re fine!”

I hung up. She tried calling back a few times, but I just kept picking up and hanging up so she couldn’t leave a voicemail. The cats are fine, overall, but my relationship with my sister is forever ruined.

I overhear this conversation between a child and his father.

Child: “Hey, Dad, what does ‘misanthropic’ mean?”

Father: “It means someone who likes dogs more than humans.”

Child: “…Huh. I guess I’m misanthropic?”

Father: “Most people are, son. Most people are.”

When I was at college, I had a friend of the opposite sex record an answering machine message for me.

Message: “I can’t answer the phone right now; I’m not feeling like myself today. I’ll call back when I am feeling more like I did when I wasn’t feeling like I do now.”

I eventually had to change it after great consternation from my grandmother, who was Very Concerned that there was a woman in my dorm room.

I had to take my toddler in my car whilst my wife drove her car to the garage to get the exhaust fixed. I was going to pick her up, and we would all then go shopping. While I was strapping [Son] into his car seat, he asked where Mummy was going, so I told him. He tried to say “exhaust” but failed completely, so I tried to help him.

(Just a brief note: this happened in England, and we pronounce words differently here.)

Me: “Say ‘Ex’.”

Son: “Ex.”

Me: “Now try ‘Orst’.”

Son: “Orst.”

Me: “Very good. Now try them together: ‘Ex… orst’.”

Son: “Ex… and bacon!”

It took about a minute or two before I was safe to drive, as I was crying with laughter so much, and my son’s giggles at my condition only made me howl all the more!

When I was a teenager and didn’t have quite all my common sense in place yet, my uncle was hosting a BIG party because a notable family member was turning eighty. Once the house was fully prepared, I thought that the best way to distract the kiddos and get all their wiggles out was to play my Tossing Game with them.

In the back room, I put a mattress on the floor, piled all the pillows in the house on top, and one at a time began to spin each toddler cousin, nephew, and assorted hanger-on in a big circle going, “One… two… three!”, before throwing them into the pile.

The kiddos love the Tossing Game. They’d crash, clamber out, and jump right back in line for another turn.

It took me a while to realise that there were suddenly MORE kids than I remembered throwing. Like, a lot more. Guests had started to arrive, and every. Single. Little. Kid. Immediately found their way to the back room to join in. I’d gone from seven to twenty-one.

Now, it took a bit, but then Teenager [Me] realised that maybe throwing STRANGERS’ kids might be a problem.

To solve this, I promptly went out of the back room with the gaggle of twenty toddlers to loudly ask the party at large:

Me: “Hey, is it okay if I throw your kids at a wall?”

At that point, the eighty-year-old guest of honour decided that rather than socialising with all his friends, HE’D like to throw the kids at the wall, too, thanks.