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especially since she outright refused to apologise to my wife, even trying to compare her behaviour with my wife being withdrawn at her family gatherings since for some reason the entire extended family tends to pretend my wife doesn’t exist.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.

My roommate was stealing my food and not only not admitting it but apparently bragging about it to my other roommates and calling me a “pushover”. I didn’t want to participate in whatever they thought they were doing, especially since I am moving away in two months. But I do want my food.

Today, they were sitting in the kitchen chatting. I came in, took my meatballs from the fridge, and licked them one by one while maintaining eye contact with the thief. Then, I licked several other items, spit into my milk (it’s a waste of milk, but luckily, there wasn’t a lot), etc. 

[Thieving Roommate] looked utterly disgusted. Eventually, she asked:

Thieving Roommate: “Are you mental?”

Me: *Calmly* “I always do this, didn’t you know?”

And I left.

I didn’t know if she would stop, but her face of mixed disgust and horror made it worth it. My food wasn’t stolen the next day!

My wife and I are visiting my parents while my brother and his kids are in town. One night, we decide to play Jackbox on my dad’s Nintendo Switch. I go to get the game set up, and the Switch can’t connect to the Wi-Fi.

No problem. I go in and reenter the network information and… nothing. I only get a vague “Unable to connect to network” message with an error code that, when Googled, gives me the spectacularly unhelpful advice: “Reset router, reset modem, move Switch closer to router, reboot the Switch, reenter network information, etc.” — basically all the things that a tech-competent person tries.

We’re able to get it to connect to phone hotspots, while my niece’s Switch can connect to the Wi-Fi with no problem (and no other device is having any issues), but no matter what I try, I can’t get my dad’s Switch to connect to it.

The next day, I contact Nintendo tech support via chat and beat my head against a wall for close to an hour while the tech runs me through all the “reset router, reset modem, reboot Switch” steps that I’ve already done a dozen times. Eventually, he tells me to take it to someone else’s house and try to get it to connect to their Wi-Fi. If that doesn’t work, they’ll take the console back for repairs. We don’t have anyone immediately nearby to go test it, so I give up on Nintendo tech support for the time being.

My dad insists he hasn’t made any changes to the network settings or hardware, but I decide to go into the router configuration and poke around. I try changing the network settings and even set up a guest network, and while any other device connects easily, the Switch resolutely refuses to connect no matter what I do. I’m getting to the point where I’m thinking we may have to do a factory reset on the Switch or router (or both), but I decide to comb through the offline device list and just see if I can find the Switch in the router’s history.

After going through about twenty devices, I find an offline “UNKNOWN DEVICE” that matches the Switch’s MAC address. To my astonishment, right below that, I see a big green button labeled, “Unblock device.”

Me: “Dad, why did you block this device from your router?”

Dad: “Oh. Like a week ago, I went through and blocked anything that said ‘Unknown Device.'”

Me: “…”

Dad: “What?”

Me: “You said you didn’t make any changes.”

Dad: “That’s not a network setting.”

He had to sit out the first round of Jackbox as punishment.

My neighbor and I aren’t friends, but we wave when passing in vehicles or walking. About a year ago, my wife ordered something for one of our kids, and it was delivered to the wrong house. Our house numbers and mailboxes are very similar and easy to confuse, like 668 and 688.

After a couple of days, I called, and the company sent me the photo taken of the box on my neighbor’s porch, so I walked over to retrieve it.

Neighbor: “I took it back to the shipping hub. I was heading in that direction anyway.”

When I asked why he didn’t either text me or just walk next door, he didn’t have an answer. Okay, very frustrating. It took five more days for our item to arrive.

On Friday afternoon, I was working from home, and I saw a box delivered to my porch. I went out to get it and saw that it was a package for [Neighbor]. On the small return portion of the shipping label, it said, “[Electronics Company], one-day rush,” and the shipping sticker said something like $31.39.

My neighbor had ordered a laptop by the weight of it and had rushed it over. I picked it up and went straight to the shipping center — after all my errands were done so I was walking in at 4:50 pm. I didn’t want to risk them trying to redeliver it before the end of the day.

The next day, [Neighbor] came over with the photo of the box on my front deck.

Neighbor: “Do you have my package? It’s important.”

Me: “I took it back to be redelivered.”

Neighbor: *Almost enraged* “Why?!”

Me: “That’s the exact same question I asked you when you did it before. Just thought this was what you wanted going forward.”

He was walking down my driveway, shaking his head extra dramatically, but what’s good for one should be good for all, no?