I give you three instances of my ex that I have since dubbed “The Snap™”, where she could go from 0 to 1000 in an instant.

Example #1:

I’m cooking her dinner.

Me: “Hey, babe, do you want a boiled egg with your curry?”

Ex: *Extremely snappy out of nowhere* “I don’t know. Do you want to be single?”

Me: “…That would be a no, then?”

Ex: “Duh! Boiled eggs are f****** gross! If you like boiled eggs, you’re a psychopath. Why would you even ask me if I want an egg with my curry of all things?”

Me: “Because I like an egg with my curry sometimes. I guess I’m a psycho, then.”

Somehow, she is back to perfectly pleasant after that.

Example #2:

Again, a dinner incident. I planned to make pancakes, but we’re out of jam for topping, so we pop to the store.

Ex: “What flavour jam were you craving?”

Me: “Dunno… I’m a bit fed up with forest fruit, as I always have that.”

Ex: “How about strawberry?” 

Me: “Not really, either. I think I want—”

Cue The Snap™.

Ex: “OH, MY GOD! Forget about the whole f****** d*** jam, then, why don’t you?!”

Me: “—blackcurrant. Uh… is there a problem?”

Ex: *Suddenly sugary sweet again* “No… why?”

Me: “We can get strawberry if you really prefer that.”

Ex: *Still smiling innocently* “No, blackcurrant is fine.” 

These kinds of instances pop up here and there, and when I ask her about it, she first ignores it, but after a while, she confesses that she is going through a burnout and she’s just tired and depressed, and that’s why she’s snappy. We haven’t been dating for three months, and we’re not at an “unconditional love and support” level by a long shot, especially not with the way she has been snapping at me, but I try my best by her. She says she understands that I need some more love and attention than she is giving me, and she urges me to speak up about it when I need it.

So, we come to the scene of the last Snap™.

We’re at her place, sitting on opposite ends of the couch. I open my arms to invite a snuggle, but she claims she is “too tired to even lean across”.

But not two seconds later, she gets up to pluck her cat from the other end of the room and give it a very grand display of hugs and kisses.

Trying to be playful and not too “Hello, I’d like some attention” and on-the-nose with my needs, I say:

Me: “Wow, [Cat] gets so many kisses today! You happen to have one to spare for me?”

Ex: *Snappy thundercloud out of nowhere* “I don’t know. Check under the couch for one for all I care.” 

I broke up with her the week after that, and somehow she was all “Surprised Pikachu Face” about it, even after all this.

My mom regularly video calls with my niece, my sister’s child, who is two years old. My mother also has four cats. Every time my sister initiates a call, my niece asks to see the cats. I overhear the most recent video call.

Mom: “Hi, [Niece], sweetie!”

Niece: “Kitty?”

Sister: *Exasperated* “Can you at least say hi to Grammie first?”

Niece: *Cheerily* “No, thank you, Grammie! Kitty, please!”

Back in high school, I remember learning to make a circuit with wires, a battery, and a tiny lightbulb. The really smart kids also added a switch and learned how it connected and disconnected the circuit.

Present day, my fourteen-year-old turns to me and asks.

Kid: “Do you want to see my homework?”

Me: “Sure.”

They pull out all these wires and three little coloured lights — red, yellow, and green — and proceed to construct something. They’re connecting alligator clips and troubleshooting which bulbs need to be replaced. Finally, they have the whole thing put together.

Me: “Is this for an electrical class or something?”

Kid: “No. It’s for coding.”

And then they plug it into their computer and open up a program they wrote. I stare in wonder as the lights flash on and off. Red. Green. Yellow.

Kid: “That’s not right; these two are mixed up.”

They then reassemble it so they light up red, then yellow, and then green, muttering to themself as they go.

Me: “Hey, even with the signals being switched, that is still really impressive.”

Kid: “What? I haven’t started yet. This program just tests that I wired it properly. Here is my coding homework.”

And then the lights started flashing in a pattern with alternating speeds. I stood there with my mind blown, remembering my school days with the lightbulb, battery, and switch.

Kids these days.

When my wife and I (both women in our thirties) had our wedding five years ago, we decided to host it at my wife’s mother’s house. We dressed up the garden, and it looked magical. We were able to have a stunning garden wedding with about 100 guests, relatively cheaply.

On the big day, while getting set up, my mother was buzzing around making a complete nuisance of herself — trying to change how tables were arranged and allocated and bothering both my wife and me while we were getting ready for the ceremony. Our friend, who was the unofficial manager of the wedding, was doing his best to keep her satiated while also keeping her from bothering the brides.

When it came time for speeches, I made mention of people who specifically helped and people who were a part of the wedding party. My sister was mentioned as she was a part of the wedding party, and my mother-in-law was mentioned for partially funding the wedding and hosting it at her house, investing a lot of time and effort.

In the end, my mother did not get mentioned because she did not help (but rather, hindered) and has honestly never done anything to support us.

When it became clear that she was not getting mentioned, her family started shouting at me from across the garden, “reminding” me to mention my mother. Out of surprise and shock, I made a quick mention, but I honestly had no idea what to even say. It made no sense to me to mention her.

Shortly after, my mother left in tears, and she took her entire extended family with her (about a quarter of the guests). Most of them didn’t even say goodbye. It was a devastating amount of drama for what should’ve been a magical day.

My dad handled it well and comforted us both. (He and my mother are divorced.) I don’t regret not mentioning her even a little bit. All it did was highlight that she can’t be trusted to participate in our lives in any important or meaningful way.

The relationship has never been the same since, especially since she outright refused to apologise to my wife, even trying to compare her behaviour with my wife being withdrawn at her family gatherings since for some reason the entire extended family tends to pretend my wife doesn’t exist.

It was totally bizarre. I am glad my wife still loves me so much despite my insane mother.

My family acquired a big mutt mix of a dog; my mom’s coworker found him wandering the parking lot at work. The coworker couldn’t keep him, as it was big and clearly still a puppy, and he lived in an apartment. He did keep him long enough for the dog to chew up a table leg and forever earn the name Chewy!

But he knew my mom had kids, and we had a big backyard, so Chewy came to live with us.

Eventually (to my ADHD kid brain, it was a long time, but in reality, I think it was less than a year), it became clear that Chewy was too much for us. My siblings and I stopped going into the backyard because Chewy would jump on us and chase us around. He only wanted to play, but he was big to little seven-year-old me! We didn’t have the time or the money to get him trained, and without that, he was too unmanageable.

So, he went to live on a farm!

I’m not sure how my parents found them — I think it was early-days Craigslist — but a family replied. They lived on a farm and had recently lost one of their dogs. They had three boys who were all used to big dogs and knew how to train them.

They came and met Chewy, and he happily went home with his new family that same day.