I was lucky enough to graduate college right around when the health crisis hit. Finding a job in my preferred field became a lot harder, so in the meantime, I’ve been applying to just about every opening I come across. However, most of these jobs are retail or customer service, which I don’t have a lot of experience in. I tend to get passed over in favor of applicants who do, which is only to be expected.

But my not-at-all-tech-savvy father recently decided that the real reason I’m not getting hired is that I simply need to “show more initiative” by walking in and applying in person. He’s constantly trying to bring me to places that are hiring —- 99% of the time, I’ve already applied there online, of course — and will tell me to go in and ask the manager for a job, despite me explaining to him that pretty much no one does things that way anymore. Avoiding him is more or less impossible since I still live at home.

I’ve asked managers, in front of him, if they accept anything other than online applications, and I’ve taken pictures of signs telling job seekers to apply online. This generally works for only a few days before my father hears through the grapevine that someone somewhere got hired by just walking in, and it starts all over again. My heart goes out to every manager who’s had to put up with this kind of stubbornness before.

It’s the day before my first job interview, and I’m practising the language needed in the kitchen. The script doesn’t use the Latin alphabet, so I’m reading aloud to myself, relatively quietly. Every time my dad walks into the room, he gives me weird looks, and after I call it a day, he says this.

Dad: “You can’t do that when you’re working in an office.”

Me: “What?”

Dad: “The muttering. It won’t fly in such a place.”

Me: “I know. You’ve said before.”

Dad: “You did it anyway. That’s going to get you fired.”

Me: “I’m aware. I don’t read aloud outside the house.”

Dad: “You need to stop so you don’t do it in an office.”

This is not the only time he’s used, “If you were in an office, you wouldn’t do this, or would do that.” Our home is NOT an office.

My mother has gained her new independence through her divorce and gone back to school. While I am very proud of her, this, unfortunately, fuels her entitled “the customer is always right” attitude into a brand-new weapon and makes her think she knows everything — such as critiquing the WAY someone argues with her by shouting, “THAT’S A FALLACY!” in their face rather than actually listening to their point, or thinking that she knows anything and everything about running a business.

While I was used to this behavior growing up, I’ve started to notice her awful behavior more and more and stopped entertaining it. It’s begun to stress me out to the point that I can’t stand going places with her.

We are at an ice cream place at the mall that mixes ice cream with chosen ingredients in front of you.

Me: “Mom, did you want any ice cream?”

Mom: “Yeah, I want a Tin Roof sundae.”

Me: “I don’t think they have that. This is [Ice Cream Place].”

Mom: “They’re an ice cream place. Of course, they’ll have it. If they don’t, they can give me something like it.”

Me: “Okay, what’s in a Tin Roof sundae? At [Ice Cream Place], they have their own mixtures, or you can pick a flavor and two toppings.”

Mom: “Uh, I don’t know! It’s a common ice cream, like Rocky Road or strawberry! They should know what it is!”

Me: “I don’t even know what it is! But if you give me the ingredients, I can have them make whatever is similar for you! They don’t have Tin Roof sundaes!”

Mom: “Well, how do you know? Did you ask?“

Me: “I used to come here frequently. They make things a certain way. But fine, I will ask. What do you want me to say if they don’t have it?”

She stares at me. I stare back.

Mom: “Well, if they don’t know what a Tin Roof sundae is, then I don’t want anything from them.”

Me: “Okay, fine.” *Walks away*

Mom: “Do they have chocolate?“

Me: “Yes!”

Mom: “Then they should have Tin Roof sundaes!”

I just facepalm and go inside to order. My mom approaches me after I order my ice cream.

Mom: “Did you ask yet?”

Me: “Not yet. It’s kind of busy and I’m trying to let the guy concentrate before I bombard him with more.”

A worker walks up.

Worker: “How can I help you?”

Mom: “Do you have Tin Roof sundaes?”

Worker: “We do not.”

Mom: *Miffed* “Well, do you have anything like it?”

Worker: “Um… you see… I don’t actually know what that is… but if you know what’s in it we can probably make something similar.”

My mom stares at the worker blankly for a solid ten seconds and walks away without another word.

Me: *Embarrassed* “Thank you. She’s good. Never mind.”

Later, when we sit down:

Me: “I told you they wouldn’t know what it is.”

Mom: “Well, that’s because she’s young. You shouldn’t work in an ice cream place if you don’t know your products.”

Me: “Yes, because a teenager working a part-time job is going to magically memorize the details of anything that has to do with the products they sell… Not like they have other things to do or an average memory or anything.”

She didn’t respond and just rolled her eyes. I enjoyed my ice cream in peace.

My mother suffered a terrible crash in the early 1990s that should have killed her but, for whatever reason, didn’t. It was off a low-water bridge and as a result, she went through a phase for over a decade of being terrified of driving over bridges. It lessened with time, but the one bridge that still terrifies her to this day is the bridge over the Mississippi River from Arkansas to Tennessee, which is unfortunate because she would have to drive over it to take me to visit my father as a child.

As I grew up, she refused to let me drive the trip because it was best for her to remain in control of the car while going over the bridge. But when my father died, we had to bring home several antiques in a moving van, which one of us had to drive, so she agreed to let me drive the trip for the first and only time.

On the way to the funeral, about a half-hour from the bridge, Mom is on her phone, reading an article about the history of the area, and she starts reading it aloud to me. I figure she’s doing this to distract and calm herself, so I tune her out and focus on driving. I get over the bridge and get to the eastern outskirts of Memphis when she finally looks up again.

Mom: “Uh… where are we?!”

Me: “We are [miles] from Nashville.”

Mom: “Did you cross the bridge?”

Me: “Kinda had to, yes. You were reading to distract yourself; I didn’t want to bother you.”

Mom: “I was just enjoying the article; I had no idea we even crossed the bridge!”

And then, on the way back, we’re trying to make the trip in one go because I have to be at work the next afternoon. Mom is driving the moving van, and we’re coordinating through our phones. About two hours east of Memphis, she calls me and asks me to pull over at the next gas station.

Mom: “You’ll have to call in to work; we need to stop for the night.”

Me: “Why?”

Mom: “The bridge is coming up and I just need a night’s rest. It’s dark and I’d rather it be daylight when we try.”

Me: “No, we’re going on, and we’re crossing tonight.”

Mom: “What?!”

Me: “It’s two in the morning. It’ll be four when we get there. There’s going to be no one driving. The bridge is lit up. We can get on the inside lane and go as slow as you need, because there will be no traffic to slow down. If you can’t see the water, you can tell yourself you’re driving on solid land. It’s going to actually be easier. If we stop, we stop in Arkansas.”

Mom: “I don’t know…”

Me: “Look, you can get a motel room for the night. I’ll see you at home.”

We cross the river, on the phone with each other the entire way, and we finally pull over at a large truck stop in West Memphis.

Mom: “I can’t believe I never thought of that before! That’s the easiest I have ever made that trip!”

Me: “Yeah, I have a lot of anxieties and phobias, and that’s how I always force myself past them.”

When I was growing up, my mother regularly talked about how she hated Pomeranians — “little yappy things,” she called them — and how she hated dogs named Mitzi and would never own one, ever. She had a neighbor when she was young with a vicious little dog that matched this description.

One day when I was about fourteen, I was at a mall with my parents and my mother had gone into a fabric store. My father and I walked into a pet store to kill time, and while we were there, someone brought in a sweet-tempered little dog she wanted to sell.

My father started interacting with the dog and liked it.

Father: “What sort of dog is this?”

Owner: “She’s a Pomeranian.”

Father: “What’s her name?”

Owner: “Mitzi.”

My father lit up like a Christmas tree.

Father: “[My Name], go tell your mother I’m buying a Pomeranian named Mitzi.”

I thought it would be funny to tell her that, so I found her.

Me: “Dad’s buying a Pomeranian named Mitzi.”

I’d never seen my mother look so horrified in her life. She dropped her shopping and stormed off to the pet store. However, by the time we got back, my father had actually bought the dog. My mother stared daggers at him all the way home and said she wanted nothing to do with the dog. 

But within about three days, that dog had my mother totally smitten. She was gentle and mischievous and not at all happy — except when moose came into the yard. The only remainder of her previous insistence was that we were not allowed to call the dog Mitzi but instead called her Mits.

She ended up becoming my mother’s dog until the day she died while out chasing a moose — her favorite activity. My mother ended up with her favorite dog all because it was a breed and name she despised.