(I meet my future husband when I am in college. He is eleven years older than me, but we hit it off, and I decide to move in with him the summer after my junior year. I have a summer job but can’t afford to live in the dorms. My parents aren’t happy; I am their oldest, they are Catholics, and many of my cousins got married very young due to someone getting pregnant. My mom is quite adamant that neither I nor my sister gets pregnant before marriage/college degrees are finished. [Husband] got a vasectomy years before during a previous marriage, but I don’t feel that my mom needs to know that at this stage. There are many discussions about my moving in with him, but this is the one that makes me facepalm.)
Me: “Look. I have a job, and I can’t afford to live on my own for the summer. I’m going to be over at [Husband]’s apartment all the time anyway. It doesn’t make any sense to pay for two places.”
Mom: “I just don’t want to be a grandmother before you are married. You know that [Cousin #1] and [Cousin #2] both ended up dropping out of college once they got pregnant and it led to a lot of financial issues.”
Me: *growing weary of these discussions* “Mom, [Husband] can’t have kids, okay? There is physically no way I can get pregnant.”
Mom: “But what are you going to do if you want to have kids someday?”
Me: *facepalm* “Mixed messages much?”
(We’re still together after 28 years. Solved the kid thing with adoption. Everyone lived happily ever after.)
(My boyfriend has to have emergency surgery to remove an abscess in his a**. As he recently moved here he doesn’t have a place of his own and is staying with me, which is handy as he does need some help to look after the wound. As he needs to shower after every time he poops and I’m the one who washes his wound, I often wait in the bathroom for him to finish. He has been feeling down with all this, so I start give him a hug while he is on the loo.)
Boyfriend: “Why don’t you find this uncomfortable or disgusting?”
Me: “You’re not pooping out of this end.”
(We’re the family from The Cats Demand You Spill The Beans. This time, my husband is in the kitchen grinding pork butt and mixing it with spices to make sausages. I overhear the following exchange between him and one of our cats.)
Cat: *whiny meow*
Husband: “This is pork butt. You don’t want this.”
Cat: *whiny meow*
Husband: “This is raw pork. Does the word ‘trichinosis’ mean anything to you?”
Cat: *whiny meow*
Husband: “Even your wildest ancestors could not have taken down a pig. Why would you even want raw pork? It doesn’t taste like ham. This is ham before it’s ham. It doesn’t even smell like ham.”
Cat: *whiny meow*
Husband: “We already discussed this, remember? You told me you wanted it, and I told you no, because it would make you very sick? Now stop it.”
(The cat whined once more and apparently accepted defeat because she wandered off to sit in the hallway, staring wistfully into the kitchen. Life is hard when you’re a cat whose humans love you.)
(A few years ago, my grandfather started having trouble walking. One day, he comes back from the store and, upon opening the door, immediately starts this conversation.)
Grandfather: “I have a cocaine!”
Me: “What?”
(I turned around and saw my grandfather gesturing to the new cane he bought, with a Coca-Cola design on it. He never let me live it down until the day he died.)
(I’m cleaning up after a cat incident, letting out harsh, barking coughs every few seconds. After a few minutes of this, my housemate sticks her head out her door in concern.)
Housemate: “You okay? What happened?”
Me: “[Cat] caught a bird. It wasn’t hurt, so I let it go outside, but it lost a lot of feathers.”
Housemate: “Aren’t you allergic to feathers?”
Me: “EXTREMELY.”
