(My brother and I are sitting together playing a popular word game on our phones. I play the word “data” and, thanks to the precise placement of the letters, I score like 36 points. When he sees the word, he gets upset.)

Brother: “What?! What kinds bulls*** word is that?!”

Me: *confused*

Brother: “Dah-tah? That’s not even a word!”

Me: “That’s ‘data,’ you f****** moron.”

Brother: *pause* “Shut up.”

(It’s been about a year since that happened and I haven’t let him live it down since!)

(My parents are going on vacation for a week. Since they have a dog, they ask me to housesit for the week. Two days after they leave, I hear a thud, the doorknob jiggling, and then the doorbell. With the chain still latched, I open the door and see my aunt, hands empty save for her purse. For background, she used to fawn over me. However, since I turned 18 — meaning upon my parents’ death, I would no longer require a guardian and would receive direct control over their assets — she’s barely spoken to me, even when I’m in the room.)

Aunt: “Hey there! Why’s the door locked?”

Me: “Why shouldn’t it be locked?”

Aunt: “It’s Sunday.”

Me: “And?”

Aunt: “We always have dinner together here on Sundays.”

Me: “You know my parents are on vacation, right?”

Aunt: “Yeah.”

Me: “…”

Aunt: “…”

Me: “So, there’s no family dinner this Sunday.”

Aunt: “But we always have Sunday dinner!”

Me: “When my mother is here to host it. She invites you over. She’s not here, so I don’t know why you think you’re invited.”

Aunt: “Because I’m family!”

Me: *shoots her the dirtiest “Oh, really?” look I can muster* “That doesn’t make this your house.”

Aunt: “It doesn’t make it yours, either!”

Me: “Which is exactly why I’m not inviting you in.” *slams the door in her face*

(She bangs on the door, rings the bell, and calls the home phone non-stop. When she still can’t take the hint, I have to involve the police. By the time they get here, my uncle has shown up, hands also empty, and joined in the tantrum. Since the background with him is pretty much the same story, I don’t step out to help him. About an hour later, I get a phone call from my mother.)

Mother: “You had [Uncle] and [Aunt] arrested?!”

Me: “They kept banging on the door and demanding entry. What else was I supposed to do?”

Mother: “Invite them in! I told them to come over and bring pizza so you wouldn’t have to cook for them!”

Me: “Then how about you tell me that next time, too?”

Mother: “I shouldn’t have had to! We always have family dinner on Sundays!”

I was nine when my parents divorced, and I chose to stay with my father. We used to live about 350 miles away from his parents’ home, and then, after the separation, we moved and we were only 75 miles away.

So, every week, for about two years, my grandparents came to our place from Monday afternoon to Friday morning, supposedly to watch after me all week long, and on Friday evening, my father and I went to theirs every weekend.

Soon, that routine became pretty tiresome. For example, my father had to lend his bedroom to his parents, hence, he had to sleep on the sofa in the living room. The walls were quite thick between the two rooms, but pretty much every evening, around nine, my grandmother came back from the bedroom to ask us, gently but firmly, to turn down the sound of our TV. The reason she used was always the same: “It bothers [[Grandfather]; he can’t sleep.” Sometimes, she came back a second time, a little bit angrier, saying they were still hearing the TV, or that the TV was loudly humming. It wasn’t; two yards away from the set, my father and I couldn’t even hear the sound anymore because we had to basically shut it down not to disturb her sleep. Yes, hers. Because my grandfather never came to complain at all, not once. Men in my family are very heavy sleepers, prone to doze off in less than two minutes, TV on or not! In fact, we had to wait until SHE was finally sleeping to put the sound back on, even moderately.

About ten years later, a few months after my grandfather passed away, I had to stay at my grandmother’s for one night. Then, she forbade me to use my portable CD player before sleeping — even with headphones — because she could “hear the buzzing sound it makes through the wall.”

Yeah, sure, Grandma.

(Even though I’m divorced and my ex-husband and his parents live in another country, I still have a great relationship with my former in-laws. My six-year-old daughter — their only grandchild — and I FaceTime them one morning. It should be noted that [Grandma-In-Law]’s English is horrible, but she always understands what I’m saying and what’s going on. [Grandpa-in-Law]’s English is okay, but he doesn’t ever understand what’s going on.)

Me: *to my daughter* “Tell them where you’re going next week with Grandma!” *my mom*

Daughter: “I’m going to Disney World with Grandma!”

Grandma-In-Law: *starts excitedly yelling in Hebrew* “So fun! Mickey Mouse! You’ll see the princess and the castle!”

(She then tells Grandpa — also in Hebrew — who wasn’t paying attention.)

Grandpa-In-Law: *in English* “Oh, so fun! If you see Harry Potter, you tell him, ‘Hi,’ from me!”

(My daughter looks at me, confused, and I see my mother-in-law rolling her eyes in the background.)

Me: *whispering to my daughter* “Smile and say yes.”

Daughter: “Yyyeaah?!”

Grandpa-In-Law: “So much fun! Harry Potter!”

(When I am in high school, I have this crappy little netbook that I take to class to take notes. One day, I notice that the battery refuses to charge. I have this conversation with my Dad.)

Me: “Hey, Dad, my netbook isn’t charging.”

Dad: “Well, I can take it to the shop and have them look at it. Probably just a bad battery.”

(Since I still need to take notes, I end up running the battery down by the time my dad takes it to the shop. He comes back and says that there is an issue with the connection from the cord to the battery. I can’t remember what it is, just that the battery works fine and the charging cable is fine; it is the connection between. My computer has a very easily detachable battery.)

Me: “Hey, Dad, do you think it’s possible for the shop to charge the battery for me? I want to try to save some of the files on my computer that didn’t get backed up.”

Dad: “Yeah, sure. We can go this weekend.”

(A week passes.)

Me: “Hey, Dad, when are we going to be able to go to the shop? I would like to get the files off my laptop.”

Dad: “I don’t know. Probably in the next couple of weeks.”

(A few weeks pass.)

Me: “Dad, can we go to the shop this weekend? I really want to get those files off my computer.”

Dad: *condescendingly* “Well, sweetie, you do realize that that shop isn’t going to able to do that, right? File recovery is a difficult, expensive operation. You’re going to have to let those files go.”

Me: “Dad, you do remember that we just need to charge the battery to get those files, right? The computer works fine; it just can’t charge the battery. My battery is even made so it can be taken out of the computer and recharged.”

Dad: *silence*

Me: “You were the one who took it to the shop! Don’t you remember them telling you this?”

Dad: *long pause* “We can go next week.”

(That weekend my netbook was sitting on my desk, fully repaired. I still don’t know what was going on in my dad’s head.)