I am on a family trip with my parents, my uncle, and his three kids. My uncle’s wife divorced him, leaving him to take care of his kids. My parents run a small leather business, so they’re going to be selling to gas stations and a few other places. They dump [Uncle], the kids, and me at the hotel, which has a casino inside. I watch TV for a bit, and then [Uncle] comes to my room.

Uncle: “Hey, I’m going out. Watch the kids?”

He then leaves before I can get a word in edgewise. I go down to the front and find that they also have a daycare center. Thank God. I ask them to charge it to the card the hotel is on, and then I head off to the casino. Eventually, [Uncle] comes over.

Uncle: “Where are the kids?”

I point him to the daycare center. It is of note that he has had anger issues in the past. These come into full effect as he starts yelling at me. I ignore him and go back to my game.

Security comes over, and [Uncle] is suddenly meek and quiet.

Uncle: “I asked [My Name] here to watch my kids, and now they’re nowhere to be found.”

Me: “He didn’t ‘ask’ me; he just said, ‘Watch the kids?’ and left. They are now at the daycare.”

It becomes a he-said-she-said situation, so I stand up, beckoning for them to follow, and lead them to the daycare.

Apparently, [Child #1] was too wild, and [Child #2] had hit another child and made them bleed. [Child #3] is coloring. [Uncle] has to pay an extra fee, and [Child #2] has to be moved to a special group.

Eventually, my parents come back, wondering what this charge on their card is. The hotel staff explain, and they are not happy.

Tomorrow comes, and guess what? [Uncle] takes off again, this time without telling me. I only find out when [Child #3] knocks on my door. Apparently, his brothers pushed him out and locked the door behind him. He asks if we can go back to the daycare, and I ask the hotel staff to charge me this time.

I eventually go back to the casino and play a few rounds, but the hotel staff come to me, saying there’s been a noise complaint. I ask them to call my parents’ number, and they agree.

Eventually, I run down on cash and go back to my room. My parents and [Uncle] are in the middle of the hallway, arguing. I slip past them and into the room and turn on the TV.

Later, I come out for a snack, and they turn to me, asking why I didn’t check on the kids. I tell them [Uncle] didn’t even knock on my door; [Child #3] did. I then realize he’s still down at the daycare, and it is quite late. I run quickly down and find he’s playing hide and seek with a few other kids. I bring him back up.

My parents and [Uncle] are still arguing. It’s a mess.

This goes on for several days. [Uncle] tries to dump kids on me, I refuse, and I either go to the arcade, stay in and watch TV, or go to the casino. I eventually rack up quite a bit of money. I had $150 at the start, and that turns into almost $400.

It’s been almost a week here, and everyone is getting really sick and tired of [Uncle]’s crap. [Child #3] can now walk down to the daycare and back, all on his own. [Child #1] and [Child #2] get lost several times and have to be found by hotel staff.

This all boils up when the hotel manager knocks on our door, telling us that we’ve had several noise complaints, broken items, and wandering children.

I point out that it’s not us, it’s [Uncle], so he should pay for it, or at least be here. Lo and behold, who opens his door? It’s [Uncle]. In the split second that his door is open, I can see the broken TV, towels and blankets all over the floor, and the curtains ripped down.

The hotel manager apparently misses this, asking about the noise violations and crashes they’ve been hearing. [Uncle] becomes increasingly agitated and aggressive. During this, I see [Child #3] come around the corner on his way back from the daycare. I quickly wave him away, and he turns to leave. But then, my mother sees him. She begins to question [Uncle] on why [Child #3] is out. I slowly walk [Child #3] back to the daycare.

But when I get back, the argument has reached a fever pitch. I hate yelling, and [Uncle] is screaming. He turns on me.

Uncle: “Your job is to watch the kids, and you couldn’t even do that!”

At this point, I’m done. I’ve been sharing a room with my parents for a week, I can’t go anywhere without getting harassed by [Uncle], and I can’t stay in cause of the noise [Child #1] and [Child #2] make. I turn on [Uncle] and start screaming.

Me: “YOU THINK I WANTED TO WATCH YOUR TWO LITTLE BRATS? YOU DIDNT EVEN ASK! YOU JUST DUMPED THEM ON ME AND GOT ALL TICKED OFF WHEN I BROUGHT THEM TO SOMEONE WHO COULD ACTUALLY GIVE THEM ATTENTION! LITERAL DEMONS WOULD BE BETTER THAN THOSE BRATS YOU CALL KIDS! NO WONDER [CHILD #3] DOESN’T WANT TO BE AROUND THEM! THEY CLEARLY LEARNED THEIR LACK OF MANNERS FROM YOU! THANK GOD [CHILD #3] IS ACTUALLY SANE! IT’S NO WONDER YOUR WIFE LEFT YOU IF YOU ACT LIKE THIS!”

I turned and marched back into the room, flopped on my bed, and turned on the TV. I snubbed my parents when they came back in, seeing as I was still mad.

It turns out they had paid for all of [Uncle]’s mess (again), and we were now banned from the hotel. Including me.

I yelled, but what else did I do?

I am out having dinner with family.

Uncle: “Take my water back; it doesn’t have enough ice in it.”

The waiter brings him a new water.

Uncle: “No! This has too much ice in it.”

The waiter brings him two cups: one with ice and one with water.

Uncle: “No! This isn’t what I wanted!”

Father: “[Uncle]! No one knows what you want!”

He screwed his face up and sat silent and grumpy for the rest of the meal. I don’t want to go out to eat with him again.

My wife and I are shopping for a few things in a hardware store chain, and I show my wife a display “shop magnet”. Basically, it’s a strong magnet on a broom pole for picking up metal filings, small screws, and things like that. I leave her playing with it while I go to grab what we need.

When I come back to the aisle, I find my wife with one of the shop magnets and a box of 100 small nails.

Wife: “Look! This is going to make an awesome birthday present for [Four-Year-Old Nephew]!”

Me: “You know, I think I get why your brothers and sisters won’t let you babysit your nieces and nephews.”

And no, we did not get the boy a magnet and a box of 100 small nails for his fourth birthday.

This story involves my husband’s uncle and great-uncle; I’ll call them George and Fred.

George and Fred lived around the corner from each other but in a rural area where “around the corner” means a mile or two away. On this fine day, they were talking to each other on the phone. It should be noted that this was well before the days of phone GPS.

George: “Hang on, Fred. There’s someone at the door.”

He went to answer the door and came back a few minutes later.

George: “Just some people asking for directions to [Nearest City, about thirty minutes away].”

They continued their conversation. About ten minutes later:

Fred: “Hang on. There’s someone at the door.”

He came back a few minutes later.

Fred: “So, that was also someone asking for directions to [City].”

They compared notes and found that it was the same car and couple, at which point, they called the police.

The police found them a few houses down, removing things from someone’s house. They had been going along knocking to see if people were home. If someone answered the door, they’d ask for directions, but if no one was home, they’d break in. And they’d probably have gotten away with it if George and Fred hadn’t thought it was suspicious that two cars would both need directions to [City] in the space of ten minutes.

My grandmother had five children. Her middle child, my aunt, was always a little different from the other four. She would often point out how she was the only blonde out of the five of them, and when the family got together, she seemed to remember her childhood differently than everyone else. The story about how one sister got in trouble for peeing in grandma’s dresser drawer but it turned out that it was [Aunt] who did it? That never happened. Grandpa never let them have a sandbox because they were unsanitary? There are many pictures of her playing in the sandbox he’d built in the backyard.

One of the things she liked to bring up a lot was the fact that she was the only child who wasn’t breastfed. Everything that happened to her in life was because she was bottle-fed. Bad grades? The bottle. Failed marriage? Breastmilk would have fixed that. Depression? Only people who were on the bottle can have that.

One evening, while the family was gathered for one reason or another, [Aunt] was once again loudly blaming all her woes on my grandmother’s choice to not breastfeed her when my grandmother finally had enough. There, in the middle of the living room for all to see, she suddenly ripped her shirt open, exposing herself.

Grandmother: “Would you like to start now?!”

[Aunt] never brought it up again.