(I meet my future husband when I am in college. He is eleven years older than me, but we hit it off, and I decide to move in with him the summer after my junior year. I have a summer job but can’t afford to live in the dorms. My parents aren’t happy; I am their oldest, they are Catholics, and many of my cousins got married very young due to someone getting pregnant. My mom is quite adamant that neither I nor my sister gets pregnant before marriage/college degrees are finished. [Husband] got a vasectomy years before during a previous marriage, but I don’t feel that my mom needs to know that at this stage. There are many discussions about my moving in with him, but this is the one that makes me facepalm.)

Me: “Look. I have a job, and I can’t afford to live on my own for the summer. I’m going to be over at [Husband]’s apartment all the time anyway. It doesn’t make any sense to pay for two places.”

Mom: “I just don’t want to be a grandmother before you are married. You know that [Cousin #1] and [Cousin #2] both ended up dropping out of college once they got pregnant and it led to a lot of financial issues.”

Me: *growing weary of these discussions* “Mom, [Husband] can’t have kids, okay? There is physically no way I can get pregnant.”

Mom: “But what are you going to do if you want to have kids someday?”

Me: *facepalm* “Mixed messages much?”

(We’re still together after 28 years. Solved the kid thing with adoption. Everyone lived happily ever after.)

(I am fifteen and my brother is thirteen. We start lawn care business together at the beginning of the summer. We work together to mow lawns and such. Recently, he broke his foot, so I’ve been handling the mowing, communication, money, etc. I went from making $22.50 a week to $45 a week, so I can’t complain. Today was very hot and I am all sweaty from working.)

Mom: “You look tired.”

Me: “Yeah, I’m going to take a freezie break. Let me just ask my manager.”

(I do a spin.)

Me: “I am the manager! Take a freezie break.”

(I spun again.)

Me: “I guess that’s settled. Can I, Mom?”

(In the Netherlands, you can put a sticker on your mail slot that tells mail deliverers if you want advertisement brochures and newspapers or not. They’re generally referred to as yes/no or no/no stickers, respectively for brochures and papers. My mom and I jokingly refer to them as spam filters.)

Me: “Hey, Mom, have you gone to the post office yet to get us one of those stickers? We got another load of brochures in that I can throw out right away. I’m getting tired of it.”

Mom: “Yeah, I went there and I asked if they had them but they just looked at me weirdly and said they didn’t know what I was talking about. I guess they didn’t have them, then.”

Me: “Oh, weird. Wait… What did you exactly ask for?”

Mom: “I asked for spam filters of course!”

Me: *facepalming* “Mom… They are not really called spam filters.”

Mom: “They aren’t?”

(I am eating in a fast food restaurant in the mall when a family comes down and sits at the table next to me. The dad strikes up a bit of small talk, along the lines of asking what I am reading, and then both of the parents wander off, I assume to order food for their kids. I finish up and head out, heading towards the bookstore. I’ve made it about halfway across the mall when the mother suddenly comes bustling out of the store.)

Mother: “Where are my kids?”

Me: “How the h*** should I know?”

Mother: “You were watching them!”

Me: *jaw-dropping at her audacity* “I’m not your f****** babysitter. I’m guessing they are back at [Restaurant], assuming they haven’t been kidnapped.”

(She looked at me, let out a short screech, and started hurrying back towards the restaurant, while I decided to just cut my losses and come back another day. Seriously, who the heck just expects a random stranger to watch their kids for them?)

(For as long as I can remember, my parents have called each other a word that I always presumed was some made-up nonsense pet name and my mother jokingly insisting that it was an Italian curse word; my father’s family is Italian and he’s the one started it. Finally, one day, I decide to use the wonders of the Internet and look up a translation.)

Me: “Mom, you were right! [Word] means exactly what you think it means.”

Mom: “Really?!”

Me: “Except it’s not Italian. It’s Polish.”

Mom: “You mean your father’s been cursing at me in Polish all these years?!”

(As it turns out, my father used to work with some very foul-mouthed Polish fellows and this was the one Polish word he knew. And yes, my parents still use it as a term of endearment. I love my quirky family!)