This is a story from the year 1994. My mother is the one to relay this story to me as I was but a wee tot at the time, so forgive me for any lack of details.

My family was watching a Hawks (basketball) game when the game reached halftime. The T-shirt-cannon-wielding man came out, to the delight of the crowd, and began dispensing the T-shirts that people came to these games to have a chance at getting.

The game was getting ready to start back up again, but it was delayed. When everyone turned their attention to the court, it turned out that a young boy no older than two had wandered onto the court.

Referee: “Whose child is this?”

At the same moment that the referee spoke, my mother caught one of the T-shirts and was jumped by the crowd, causing her to scream out…

At least, that’s what my dad thought. There was another thing that caused her to scream aside from the sprained ankle caused by the crowd, and it was the face on the screen.

That face was mine! I had somehow managed to find my way onto the basketball court without alerting anyone.

Thankfully, my uncle was able to get down to the court and collect me, and after some questioning, clarity to my recent adventure was given. My grandmother was the one watching me, but I was getting restless and trying to get down. My grandmother set me down, thinking that I was trying to get to my dad, but I, apparently, had other plans.

No, my mother still has not let my grandmother live this down.

Before anyone makes any speculation on the athletic proclivities of that little boy almost thirty years later, I am absolutely terrible at basketball as I am not fast, I can’t shoot to save my life, and attempts to defend usually end in hitting another player.

I work at a gift shop at a museum. A little boy with his grandma is deliberating between a toy lizard and a toy dragon.

Grandma: “Pick which one you want; you can only have one today.”

Boy: “But I want both!”

Grandma: “I know you do, sweetie. We can get another one next time. But just one for today, okay?”

Coworker: “They’re both really cool. But you have to make sure you pick one you really, really love. So, take a look at them and figure out which one you love the most.”

Grandma: “Which one do you love more? I think it might be the dragon.”

Boy: “I think it might be the dragon… and the lizard!”

Grandma: “No, just one.”

Boy: “I WANT TWO TOP PREDATORS!”

In the end, neither the boy nor his grandma would relent, so he ended up with zero top predators.

My mother told me that her mother believed that women’s abdominal muscles were not strong enough to support their organs, and foundation garments were a necessity. This was a self-fulfilling prophecy; she had eight children and always wore a girdle, so her core muscles would have atrophied, “proving” her belief was true. I imagine her back would ache just standing for a few minutes without foundations.

Forty years later, I am sitting with some friends at university. Several of my friends are doing post-graduate studies. One in particular is a qualified, working pharmacist, so she’s a woman of the world who has studied human anatomy.

Another friend arrives, so I make my excuses to the group, saying we are going to an exercise class together.

The pharmacist looks at me very seriously and gives me a stern warning.

Pharmacist: “Be careful doing core work. If your abs get too strong, they can crush your internal organs!”

It struck me at first as two vastly different beliefs, but later, I saw that they were two sides of the same coin; women’s bodies are unreliable and dangerous, and women’s instincts can’t be trusted but must rely on (male) science to be well.

My mother-in-law’s mother has recently moved to town, so we have a big dinner together at [Mother-In-Law]’s house with my wife, my wife’s grandmother, and my [Mother-In-Law]’s boyfriend. Quickly, the dinner goes downhill.

Grandmother: “I saw on the news the other day that we keep getting more and more of those immigrants. I wish they’d stop letting them in; they’re gonna ruin the country more than they already have!”

Wife: *Taken aback* “Grandma, what the h***?!”

Grandmother: “Don’t use that language with me! Especially not when I’m right!”

Mother-In-Law’s Boyfriend: “Yeah, immigrants have been ruining this country for generations.”

I put down my fork, stand up, gather my things, and head toward the door.

Mother-In-Law: “[My Name]?”

Wife: *Putting on her coat* “We’re leaving.”

Grandmother: “Why? We haven’t even had dessert yet.”

Me: “What did my grandparents ever do to you?”

[Grandmother], [Mother-In-Law], and [Mother-In-Law’s Boyfriend] all voice their confusion.

Me: “You’re talking to the grandchild of immigrants, and I’m not going to sit here and listen to this nonsense.”

Wife: “Neither am I. So we’re leaving.”

Grandmother: “What? But, but you’re…” *Trails off*

Me: “White? Yeah. Forgot that immigrants come in all different colors, didn’t you? I told you I was super Irish.”

Wife: “By the way, Grandma, your parents were also the children of immigrants — German ones. Way to be a hypocrite. We won’t be back unless you fix your behavior.”

We left and have refused several holiday invites from them since. When asked why, my wife always asks, “Is Grandma gonna be racist again? Oh, you’re not gonna tell her what she can and cannot say? Then, no, my second-generation American wife and I will not be coming.” Her family is now convinced I’m the worst, despite being directly related to immigrants themselves.

My wife’s grandmother is… not all there. Her husband passed away in 2018, and the rest of the family had to make her see sense that she could not live in their countryside home by herself anymore. She has issues with falling, and her driving is atrocious; her husband once bought her a brand-new car, and two weeks later, it was totaled. After spending the better part of a month trying to get her to face reality, she finally agreed to come back to live in the same town as the rest of us so her son, my father-in-law, could be close by in case of an emergency.

For some reason, [Wife’s Grandmother] always preferred her other son, who lived two states away and had hardly ever really helped her with anything — not that she helped him with much, either. When my wife and I were getting married, his car broke down and he asked her to borrow $250 to rent a car to make it here for his niece’s wedding. She refused, even though she was entirely able to, and we still don’t know why outside of simple greed.

[Wife’s Grandmother] had also been screwing over her late husband’s children with his previous wife and essentially managed to ensure that they saw basically zero of his inheritance and she cleaned house. Meanwhile, the rest of us were obligated to literally clean her old house as we gathered her stuff — and there was A TON of it — to move back with us. She ended up with approximately $250,000 from inheritance, pensions, life insurance, etc. That number would never stay that high for long, however.

She’s also extremely paranoid — in all the wrong places. She’s accused every family member at least once of stealing something. After we cleaned the house, she accused me of taking a package of plain white T-shirts that had belonged to her husband as if I couldn’t just go to the store and buy some myself. My wife also assured me that even if I was so desperate for clothes, he would’ve just let me have them, but no, it had to be a big deal with [Wife’s Grandmother].

She also had a friend of hers convince her that her son was stealing from her because of a fallen object in her house; she had knocked it over when she left but only saw it when she came back. But then, when she called the police, she answered the door with a GUN IN HAND. The cop immediately disarmed her but I think didn’t take her seriously after that.

My father-in-law, due to [Wife’s Grandmother] mental issues and paranoia, has been trying to gain power of attorney over her so that if she does something stupid he can try to fix it.

Unfortunately, [Wife’s Grandmother]’s stupid actions are not just a one-off occurrence. Somehow, despite how she accuses her family of stealing from her, she will meet men online and believe every word they say as gospel truth and then insist on flying states away to go meet them. Of course, every one of them usually just cooks up a sob story and she’ll already have her wallet open.

[Wife’s Grandmother] provides her information to anyone who just asks, so it’s no mystery when she has her identity stolen. Unfortunately, because of this, she’s had tens of thousands of dollars either stolen or scammed out of her. When my father-in-law intercepted a transaction for a huge amount of money, he tried so hard to get the bank to undo it. When [Wife’s Grandmother] found how much money was missing, of course, she accused her son of stealing it.

Some of these scammers have photos online that are so obviously fake it hurts to even look at. On one of [Wife’s Grandmother]’s MANY Facebook accounts, we even saw her post pictures of two of the scammer’s fake photos, a ton of her valuables, and to top it all off, her own birth certificate and SSN card. We all begged her for weeks to take that post down, but I don’t think she ever did.

Wife: “Hey, come look at this.”

She shows me a picture of an older-looking man, pretty similar to the type [Wife’s Grandmother] has been regularly contacting.

Wife: “Does he look familiar?”

Me: “No? Should I recognize him from somewhere?”

Wife: “Yeah, I hope so, considering that’s me!”

In order to prove to her grandmother how easy it is to turn yourself into anything and anyone online, my wife took a picture of herself, a twenty-two-year-old woman, and applied several filter layers to transform into a seventy-year-old man. Looking closer, I recognize that those are indeed still her cheekbones and eyebrows. It took her all of five minutes, and she already has a Facebook profile set up for this pretend person and has sent [Wife’s Grandmother] a friend request.

I don’t know if she takes this particular bait, but the scams continue. Once again, my father-in-law tries to intercept a fraudulent transaction but is too late to stop it. It turns out that was literally the last of [Wife’s Grandmother]’s money saved from her husband’s passing. All $250,000 that he saved up his whole life for, which now would’ve gone to my father-in-law and uncle-in-law on her death, is completely gone after like the third time she’s had her identity stolen in less than two years. Now, all she is left with is her Social Security income and nothing else. About a week after this, she calls us.

Grandmother: “Hey, [Father-In-Law], there’s this man I met online. He says he needs major surgery but he’s short two thousand dollars. Could you help me send it to him?”

The Rest Of Us: *Groans exasperatedly*