(I am over at my in-laws with my husband. My sister-in-law and her kids are there. We’ve just had dinner, and to keep the kids occupied, we are watching the latest “Jurassic Park” film. As my father-in-law gets the DVD player sorted, we start talking about how we can’t believe how long ago the original film came out, and how old it makes us feel.)

Me: “I remember going to see it the day it came out, on the first showing of the day.”

Mother-In-Law: “Oh, yes, we did, too. [Son] pestered me for weeks to take him and dragged me all the way there, he was so excited.”

Me: “It was a bit of a disaster for me, though. The kid in front of us at the concession stand took the last bag of Maltesers, and then we ended up sitting next to him and his mum. The kid would not shut up through the movie, kept asking his mum over and over when they were going to see the T-Rex, and then when it finally came on screen, the kid shrieked and tried to hide under the seat, chucking his drink, sweets, and popcorn all over us. His mum had to take him out as he was bawling his eyes out, so we ended up missing most of the first half of the film and ended up going to see it again the following week.”

(The mother-in-law and her family, including my husband, are suddenly stunned, staring at me. The mother-in-law then smiles.)

Mother-In-Law: “Well, you couldn’t have been that mad at the boy. You ended up marrying him.”

(The mother-in-law then explained that my husband was the boy in the cinema; the story I told is EXACTLY what happened when she took my husband to see the movie. They went on exactly the same day, at the same time, to the same cinema. My husband and I had always known that when we were little we had lived just outside London in towns next door to one another, but we didn’t go to the same schools. It was an amazing coincidence that we joke about to this day. Now, every year on our anniversary my husband buys me the biggest box of Maltesers he can find, and I buy him a toy T-Rex.)

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(My mother-in-law rules her roost, which is fine. Her house, her rules. However, she rarely listens to the rules set in other households, as she believes she knows best. My husband has invited his family over for a BBQ. My dog has a very sensitive stomach and is on prescription food to avoid any digestive issues.)

Mother-In-Law: “Where is [Dog]?”

Me: “Inside.”

Mother-In-Law: “Oh, bring her outside.”

Me: “She begs for scraps and then gets sick.”

Mother-In-Law: “But she’s probably hungry, smelling all this food.”

Me: “She has food and water right now. She doesn’t get people food because it encourages begging and, as I just said, she always gets sick.”

Mother-In-Law: “Oh, one little burger won’t hurt.”

Me: “Yes. Yes, it will. Please leave her alone.”

Mother-In-Law: *rolls her eyes but says nothing*

(Not long after this exchange, I see my dog wandering the yard, trying to snitch food from abandoned plates.)

Me: “How did [Dog] get out?”

Mother-In-Law: “She was hungry!”

Me: “I gave her food!”

Mother-In-Law: “Well, she obviously didn’t like it. Look: she wants hot dogs!”

(She tosses a fully loaded hot dog to my dog, who scarfs it down and comes over for more.)

Me: “[Mother-In-Law], I’m serious. Do not feed [Dog], or you will not be welcome back here for a long time.”

Mother-In-Law: “Don’t talk to me like that! [My Husband], is your wife always so disrespectful?”

Me: “Respect my rules and I’ll respect you.”

Mother-In-Law: “You’ll respect me because I am your mother-in-law.”

Me: “Do not feed my dog.”

Mother-In-Law: “She’s starving!”

Husband: “She is not, Mom. We don’t want her having people food. She has a sensitive stomach. You know this.”

Mother-In-Law: “Oh, it’s fine. Don’t be so uptight.”

(I took my dog back inside… where she threw up. Luckily, it wasn’t on the carpet so it was easy enough to clean up. I told my mother-in-law that she should clean it up, as she was the one who fed the dog. She refused and insisted it was something I did. She has not been invited to any other functions at our house since, and she’s quite snippy with me when we do see each other.)

(My husband used to work in a shop getting $10 an hour, and quit because of few hours and low pay. The next day, he found a better shop, getting $13 per hour for the same job. My sister-in-law just got married, and her husband is struggling to get a job, so he goes where my husband was working and gets paid even less. We don’t want to make them feel bad, so we say nothing about the new job. One day I go with my sister-in-law to pick up her kid from school, and on the way back this exchange happens:)

Sister-In-Law: “So, where is my brother working now?”

Me: “In a shop at [40 minutes away from his previous job, and 30 minutes away from home].”

Sister-In-Law: “But why so far?!”

Me: “Well, he says he likes it better there, and he gets paid more.”

Sister-In-Law: *as if she is about to teach me simple math* “Is it worth it? I mean, how much more is he getting?”

(I hate her attitude but I don’t want to make it look like I am showing off in her face.)

Me: “Just a couple dollars more.”

Sister-In-Law: *talking as if I am an idiot* “Well, that’s stupid! All the extra money he thinks he makes gets wasted on gas! He is not getting more money; he just drives all the way there for nothing…” *and goes on for around five minutes on how stupid we are*

Me: *trying to sound a bit annoyed just to make her stop* “I don’t care. I mean, he is happy there, so I’ll just let him be there. You can talk to him whenever he comes back.”

(Silence goes for a couple minutes, and then I notice she just drove past her home.)

Me: “Where are we going?”

Sister-In-Law: “I am going to get gas.”

(There are more than four gas stations between the school and her house.)

Me: “Why didn’t you stop before? You forgot?”

Sister-In-Law: “No. It is just that here is cheaper than in the others.”

(She stopped five minutes away from her home to save four or five cents. She was driving a van around the city; my husband drives a little Toyota on the interstate.)

My husband’s sister was going to be nearby on business, so my husband and I decided we would drive to the city where she was staying to take her out for dinner. About 15 minutes before we arrived, I told my husband this rather long story about two women who bump into each other after not seeing each other for a few years.

The first woman was telling the second all the (rather unbelievable) things that had been happening in her life and after each one, the second woman would say, “Wow! That’s wonderful!” When the first woman finally asked the second what she had been doing lately, the second replied that she’d been going to charm school. “Oh, really? What do they teach you in charm school?” “They teach us to say, ‘Wow! That’s wonderful!’ instead of, ‘Bulls***.’”

Hubby chuckled at the joke and that was the end of it, or so he thought.

We were sitting there enjoying a meal and listening to my sister-in-law go on and on about her wonderful son — think the male version of the Princess Ballerina Astronaut. When she finally slowed down enough to draw breath, I commented, “Wow! That’s wonderful!”

Poor hubby snorted milk out his nose halfway across the restaurant.

(I am a customer service manager in a grocery store. I come in to work one day after a couple days off to find two milk crates full of markdown Halloween merchandise behind my customer service desk. As a general rule, we only hold merchandise for 24 hours, and then it’s returned to the shelf, but we do not hold markdown merchandise at all. The cashier tells me the merchandise has been there for at least three days, so I instruct the cashier to return the markdown stuff to the appropriate area, and go about my duties. Sure enough, I am called up to customer service to handle the upset customer who asked for the markdown stuff to be held. The customer turns out to be my crazy ex-sister-in-law’s twin sister, who is also crazy.)

Ex-Sister-In-Law’s Sister: “Why did you tell her to put my stuff back?”

Me: “We don’t hold markdown merchandise. It’s first come, first serve.”

Ex-Sister-In-Law’s Sister: “But you hold stuff all the time for me.”

Me: “Not markdown merchandise. We’ve had this discussion before, so you know that.”

Ex-Sister-In-Law’s Sister: “But I couldn’t afford it the other day. I want to buy it now.”

Me: “It was just returned a bit ago, so it might still be back there. You can go look.”

Ex-Sister-In-Law’s Sister: “I can’t believe you put my stuff back. I even had them put your name on it!”

Me: “I could be fired for holding merchandise for myself, especially markdown merchandise. Do not ever use my name again.”

Ex-Sister-In-Law’s Sister: “That’s not how you treat family!”

Me: *taking a step back* “We—” *pointing to her, then to me* ‘”—were never family. And whatever family we were ended when your sister served my brother with divorce papers and a restraining order on Father’s Day.”

(With that, I turned and walked away. She had the cashier call the store manager on me, but he backed me up and told her we would no longer hold any merchandise for her. For a while, she would get stuff from the food bank and try to return it for cash, including private label stuff from other chains. My niece recently told me that the food bank banned her.)