CONTENT WARNING: Child Abuse

When I am seven or eight years old. My family is sitting down for dinner and, to my excitement, my mom and step-dad bought a two-litre bottle of Coca-Cola today. Having any kind of soda or junk food in the house is a miracle, so I am understandably eager to get myself a glass of bubbly goodness.

I wait until I have eaten some of my dinner before asking about it.

Me: “Can I have some pop?”

My step-dad interrupts before my mom can say no.

Step-Dad: “Here, why don’t you try some of this first?”

He proceeds to grab an honest-to-goodness glass cup — which makes me excited as us kids only ever get plastic — and pours it half-full with a dark liquid from a glass bottle the adults have been drinking from. He hands it to me, and I naively proceed to take a large mouthful… only to spit it all back into the cup in disgust! It isn’t juice; it is WINE.

Me: “Eww! This is gross! I don’t want this!”

Mom: *Angrily* “You just can’t waste it! You need it to drink it all. Drink it and then you can have pop.”

Me: *Starting to get upset* “What? No, please! I just want some Coke. Can I please have that?”

My mom goes to say no again when my step-dad says, “Sure,” gets up, and grabs the soda bottle. I begin to feel better as he comes back to the table… but then he pours the soda INTO the cup of wine, filling it to the top! I can already feel myself begin to get upset again.

Mom and my step-dad both stare at me.

Mom & Step-Dad: “Well?!”

I hesitantly try a sip and, unsurprisingly, it’s worse than before. I put the cup down immediately. 

Me: “I can’t drink this! It’s gross!”

Mom: *Snapping* “You’re going to drink it all; do you understand me?! You asked for that and I’m not going to waste it just because you changed your mind!”

Me: *Beginning to cry* “I didn’t want this. I just wanted some Coke. Please, I just want some pop — not this other stuff!”

Mom: *Almost yelling now* “You’re going to finish that glass and I’m not going to hear another word out of you otherwise. I don’t care if you have to sit here all night; do I make myself clear?”

I didn’t bother protesting further, because that would have only resulted in getting punished for back-talk. Instead, I just sat there and cried. She did keep me at the table after everyone else finished eating, berating me on and off for a few hours as she cleaned up, while I just sobbed and sobbed. I only got sent to bed — that wine-soda monstrosity still untouched — because it was a school night.

I’m at home. A friend is staying with me due to quarantine. While she is on Facebook, she tells me there is a new Ben and Jerry’s flavor called “Netflix and Chill.” I have been single for five years.

Me: “So I’ll finally be able to get some Netflix and chill!”

Friend: “It is peanut butter ice cream; you’re allergic to peanuts.”

Me: “Maybe I should start thinking about becoming a nun, since not even ice cream will let me have some Netflix and chill.”

Related:
Leave It To Ben & Jerry To Make Things Awkward, Part 2
Leave It To Ben & Jerry To Make Things Awkward

My son’s girlfriend, who lives with us, has a bunch of pet hermit crabs who also live with us. She recently bought a new tank for them, but the pet store didn’t have the sterilized dirt and sand she needed for the bottom.

My son does some research and finds that raising the sand/dirt to such-and-such a temperature for some amount of time will kill all the bad microbes. He proceeds to fill two pans — one with dirt and one with sand — and bake them in the oven. The smell that results is… interesting, to say the least.

My husband comes home and enters the kitchen.

Husband: “What’s cooking?” *Opens the oven* “Is that dirt?”

Me: “Yep.”

Husband: “Why are you baking dirt?”

Me: “This is what happens when you ask [Son] to cook dinner.”

I let him give me puzzled looks for a good thirty seconds before I explained.

I am visiting my parents’ house in California. I am preparing some food for our Thanksgiving dinner and I have my laptop on the counter watching YouTube videos. Most of the videos I watch are videos debunking pseudoscience and conspiracy theories. Some of the video producers have very… unique themes.

My mom walks into the room while I’m cooking and watching.

Mom: “Hi, honey, what are you watching?”

Me: “A man with a pantyhose on his face and a tophat explaining to a woman that water droplets and out-of-focus dust specks on the lenses of weather cameras aren’t a system of planets hidden by a fake sun by the government to cover up the second coming of Jesus to begin the apocalypse.”

Mom: *Pause* “Oh, okay.” *Walks away*

My wife and I have been together for nine years, living together for seven years, and married for almost four years. For the first two years of our relationship, we were long distance, and part of how we communicated with each other was through writing daily haiku on each other’s Facebook profiles. I am scrolling through my Facebook memories when I see a haiku my wife wrote for me in 2012.

Amused, I walk to the bedroom where my wife is playing our Switch. Note that I can be very loud and obnoxious, and I love doing very weird and cartoonish voices when I’m bored.

Me: “Hey. Apparently, in 2012, you wrote this haiku: ‘I love hearing your / voice, and I wish I could hear / it all of the time.'”

Wife: “Uh-huh.”

Me: *Smirking* “How do you feel now?”

She pauses.

Wife: “File that under ‘Things that did not age well.'”