My surname is Kirk, and my wife took it when we got married. Shortly before she got pregnant with our first child, both her grandfathers — James and Thomas — passed away. We’ve just found out our child is going to be a boy, and she wants to honor them by naming the child after them.

Me: “My dearest, darling wife, you know that I love you more than anything else on this earth. I’m absolutely thrilled that you want to honor your grandfathers by naming our son for them. They were both wonderful men.”

I drop into a crouch so I can speak to our son inside her belly.

Me: “And, son, I love you more than anything else on the planet besides your amazing, wonderful mother. It is because of my very great love for you that I will refuse to let you be named ‘James T. Kirk’ as long as I am alive when you are born.”

Wife: “What are you going on about?”

It suddenly clicks in what I’ve just said.

Wife: “Oh! Yeah, that would be bad. Thanks for catching that, honey.” 

Our two wonderful sons were born three years apart. The older has the middle name of James, and the younger has the middle name of Thomas. I love them and my wife more than life itself.

My first job, when I was too naïve to know any better, was working for my uncle. He wanted a programmer to maintain the website and database for his nonprofit and to help with a startup. Neither the nonprofit nor the startup could afford to HIRE a programmer, so he offered me free room and board, an allowance of $100 a week, and “experience and a spot in the company if the startup takes off.” It was stupid to work for so little, but I agreed to, and I wouldn’t complain if he’d held up his end of the bargain.

Of course, of the odds and ends that made up my “salary,” the room was the most important and valuable. My uncle lives with his girlfriend, and I moved into her basement. This story begins maybe a year after I moved in.

Uncle: “Has [Girlfriend] talked to you about her friends coming to stay?”

Me: “No?”

Uncle: “Well, she has some old friends coming next month and the basement room is the biggest and nicest spare room, so they’ll be staying there. You can take the upstairs spare room or go back to [Home State] for two days.” 

Me: “But all my things are down here! I have furniture in this room that’s too heavy to move and won’t fit in the upstairs room anyway. And I’m trying to tame the cat that lives on the basement patio; how can I do that if strangers are in this room? Not only won’t I be able to see when she’s around, but I can’t even approach the patio from outside without feeling like I’m intruding on the guests!”

Uncle: “That’s up to you. I just came downstairs to make sure you know you’ll need to leave on those days.”

I agree, reluctantly, to take the upstairs spare room. The day before the guests are supposed to arrive, I’ve almost finished cleaning my room. I plan to wash my dishes and take the items I want to keep with me upstairs that evening. I’m at the nonprofit when my uncle’s girlfriend texts me.

Girlfriend: “Hi, [My Name], my friends showed up early, so I went ahead and took all your things upstairs.”

I’m furious that she went into my room and moved my things without so much as asking for permission, let alone asking what I wanted where. But I text back, “OK,” because what else can I do? She’s already done it; I can’t exactly tell her no.

That afternoon, when I get home, I go upstairs to assess the damage. I can’t find any of my books. There’s a dirty knife, covered in jelly, at the bottom of my laundry basket, which has been repurposed into a junk basket. Various electronics are piled in it willy-nilly, some missing their charge cords. All my dishes, apart from that one knife, are in the dishwasher, even though many aren’t dishwasher-safe. I have to go down to the basement to collect clothes, because [Girlfriend] didn’t bring any up.

I also show the guests where I keep the kibble and ask them, since they have the patio, to please feed the cat. They agree, but for the rest of their stay, the kibble dish is empty every time I look at it. I eventually sneak into the basement when they’re not there to get kibble with which to refill it.

The next day, I discuss what’s happened with my uncle, trying to make him see why the situation bothers me.

Me: “First of all, she just kicked me out of my room! I didn’t get any choice in the matter.”

Uncle: “Sure, you did. You got to choose whether to stay upstairs or leave the house.”

Me: “I mean I wasn’t given a choice of whether or not to give up my room.”

Uncle: “No, you weren’t. The room is in [Girlfriend]’s house; it belongs to [Girlfriend], and just because she’s nice enough to let you use it, that doesn’t mean it belongs to you. I think you need to appreciate how [Girlfriend] has bent over backward for you. She didn’t have to let you stay in her house.”

Me: “That’s most of my salary! I earn that room!”

Uncle: “[Girlfriend] doesn’t get anything from you. You don’t write code for her; you write it for me.”

Me: “If you’re stealing from her to pay me with something that was never yours to offer in the first place, that’s between the two of you. Either the room is charity, given to me out of the goodness of [Girlfriend]’s heart — in which case, she does have the right to kick me out, but I’m working for practically nothing — or it’s part of my salary, in which case, I have the right to stay there as long as I keep doing my job. Which is it?”

Uncle: “I’m not going to discuss this.”

Later that day — while I’m still living in the upstairs guest room — we’re discussing the startup’s prospects and how much longer I can continue working with him before I start looking for a “real job”.

Uncle: “I know, I don’t pay you very much. But if you include the room and board—”

Me: “Seriously?”

Sadly, this is not the incident that led to me quitting that “job” — although it probably would have been if it weren’t for the cat, who wasn’t tame enough to transport yet. A few months and a lot of kitty treats later, after an even stupider argument, I packed her into a carrier and left for good.

My grandparents own a very nice camping trailer. One weekend, my grandpa takes it up north to spend some time with his hunting and fishing buddies. He gives my grandma a phone call before they leave and they exchange the normal I-love-yous and I’ll-miss-yous.

Grandma: “And tell you friends that I’ll skin them alive if they mess up my trailer.”

There’s dead silence on the other end.

Grandpa: “You’re on speakerphone.”

None of my grandpa’s friends made a mess in the trailer. My grandma still likes to brag about how she scared a half-dozen men with a single sentence.

My periods are INSANELY painful. I’ve been hospitalized because of them. When I am around fifteen, my stepmom and my dad go to a barbecue. They ask me to come along, but I don’t feel that great, so I stay home.

About two hours after they leave, I fall to the floor in COMPLETE pain. My dogs find me; my pit bull stays next to me while my boxer runs around looking for someone to help me. I text my dad, telling him he needs to come home, but he doesn’t answer. About five minutes later, I get a call from my stepmom.

Stepmom: “Why did you text your dad that?”

Me: “Because I’m lying on the floor in pain and can’t get up.”

Stepmom: “Why can’t you get up?”

Me: “I’m on my period and this pain won’t stop unless I stay curled up in a ball like this.”

Stepmom: “Ugh, fine, we are coming home. But don’t ever text your dad with that again.”

She hangs up. They arrive fifteen minutes later. My boxer runs over to them and shows them where I am. My dad picks me up and carries me to my room. My stepmom gets some painkillers and a heating pad and tells me to sleep. She is mad the rest of the day and won’t even look at me.

The next day, we meet my mom, and my dad tells her everything that happened. My mom and I decide to start looking into birth control. We find out I can’t have the pill because I have epilepsy, so we end up going with an implant.

I later tell my dad and stepmom that I got birth control to help and my dad is happy.

Stepmom: “I hope you know that means you can’t go around sleeping with everyone.”

I sit there in shock that she said something like that IN FRONT OF MY DAD.

Around dinnertime, I still can’t stop thinking about what she said. My dad knows that something is troubling me.

Dad: “She didn’t mean it, you know. That’s not how it was meant to come out.”

I believe my dad, of course.

When dinner is finally served, my stepmom keeps giving me dirty looks and looks at the food like I just gave her a severed human head to eat.

Stepmom: “Did [My Name] help make any of this?”

Dad: “Everything except the vegetables that you made.”

My stepmom then proceeded to only eat the vegetables, like I was going to give her some sort of disease because I got birth control. I ate about half my food and then cleaned up. My dad apologized for her, but I didn’t believe it this time.

My parents hate tattoos, so after I got my second, I sort of stopped telling them I was getting more and just wore long sleeves. However, one day at work, my mom stops by unexpectedly and sees the other four tattoos she did not know about and, of course, she tells my dad. When I get home, he wants to see them.

One thing to say, though, is that all of my tattoos are tasteful and really well done. One, in particular, is a design of a woman sitting in a crescent moon. I frequently have people stop and tell me how beautiful the piece is.

My father, however, doesn’t really look at the design or anything. No, he immediately zooms in on one detail and eloquently says:

Dad: “I can see a booby.”