My parents got divorced when I was ten and both remarried soon after. My mom married a man several years younger than her. By coincidence, the wedding was two weeks shy of her fortieth birthday, and he joked that he’d scheduled it for that date because “I wasn’t gonna marry a forty-year-old!”

Several years after that, Mom got really into genealogy. She was adopted as a baby and was never particularly interested in finding her birth parents, but as she was researching her family, she did find records related to her adoption.

In particular, she found out that in our state, at the time she was adopted, kids got a whole new birth certificate when they were adopted. She’d been given a new name, new parents, and a new birthday — the day on which her adoption was formalized. With a little more digging, she found her original birth certificate, which showed that she was roughly three weeks old when she was adopted and, therefore, was roughly three weeks older than she’d thought she was. She’d turned forty the week before her wedding.

We still tease my stepdad sometimes about how he married a forty-year-old after all. Since he’s now in his fifties and happily married to a sixty-year-old, it doesn’t seem to bother him much.

My husband and I are volunteer firefighters and EMTs in a rural area of Tennessee. We respond to a 911 call from a VERY scared teenage girl who has run her car into a ditch on a one-lane rural road during a period of very bad thunderstorms.

When we arrive on the call, the young lady’s father is already there, screaming his lungs out at his daughter for putting the car in the ditch. The poor girl is in hysterics, pleading with her father to stop yelling at her. I did the same thing in my husband’s brand-new Lexus SUV at that exact same spot on that road about eight hours ago, so we both have a lot of sympathy for her.

My husband and I confront the father after we make sure that the girl is okay physically. My husband speaks to the father in his VERY loud retired Marine Corps drill sergeant voice.

Husband: “Excuse me, sir! Why are you yelling at your poor daughter over an accident that she probably couldn’t control?! We have been getting calls all day for accidents on this road due to the weather!”

Father: “She should have known better than to travel that fast during this weather! She may have damaged the car that she just bought! Kids shouldn’t make mistakes like that!”

We notice that the car is a roughly twenty-year-old Buick sedan.

Husband: “Yeah, so? My wife did the same thing at this exact spot this morning in my brand-new Lexus, and she had to call a tow truck to get it out. The running board was damaged, but it isn’t a big deal.”

Father: “Your wife must be very stupid to make a mistake like that!”

My husband is getting VERY angry.

Husband: “My wife is forty and she has driven tour busses accident-free since she was twenty-five! Everyone makes mistakes! There was oil on this part of the road when my wife went off the road and that, combined with the wet road and the huge bump in the road, would cause anyone to lose control of their vehicle! Your daughter is just a kid; go easy on her! I am a retired Marine Corps drill sergeant, and I would never be that hard on someone over an honest mistake!”

A sheriff’s deputy arrives and he immediately confronts the father.

Deputy: *To the father* “Calm down! She just needs a tow truck to get her out. I have already called one. It doesn’t appear that she hit the ditch very fast. The worst-case scenario is that the undercarriage is scratched and there are some scratches and minor dents to the body, which I wouldn’t be worried about on a vehicle this old. This could literally happen to anyone!”

The father starts sputtering and the tow truck arrives. The tow truck driver is a high school friend of my husband, and the driver is also an ASE-certified mechanic. The tow truck driver gets the car out of the ditch and looks for obvious mechanical issues on the car. He finds a bunch of minor scratches to the side of the car that hit the ditch and a few scratches underneath, but the car is still drivable.

Tow Truck Driver: *To the father* “The car is perfectly fine to drive! She made a mistake. So what? It’s just a dang car! Get over it! In fact, I am not going to even charge her for the tow because of the way that you are acting! The poor girl doesn’t need any more grief! The car going off the road is probably enough to make her be more attentive when she is on this road!”

The father angrily gets in his own car and starts to drive away extremely fast. The next thing we know, HE ends up losing control when HIS car hits a puddle of water, putting his car in that same ditch about 300 feet down the road. We all go down to check on him and the sheriff’s deputy starts talking to him.

Deputy: *To the father* “You were just yelling at your daughter for the same thing? Based on what you said to your daughter, you must be a first-rate moron! We all told you that it could happen to anyone!”

My husband’s friend pulled the father’s car out of the ditch, and the father had actually hit the ditch so fast that he tore out his brake lines, ripped off part of his front bumper, broke the side view mirror, AND caused numerous dents and scratches to the right side of his car. The father was completely fine physically but looked EXTREMELY embarrassed. My husband’s friend said that the damage would easily cost at least $6,000 to fix and the car could possibly be totaled due to the age of the car. We all hope that he learned his lesson for yelling at his daughter over a minor mistake.

I’m driving back from the first day of my first ever job. As I’m sixteen, I’m still a very new driver. Between both of my parents having their own cars, their own work schedules, and the fact that we have a very narrow driveway, we have to shuffle cars around a lot in the evening so we aren’t getting up earlier in the morning. 

I call my dad via the hands-free option on my car when I’m only a few minutes out so he isn’t scrambling to come out to move his car for me.

Dad: “Oh, you’re calling me for this? Why don’t you just text me like your mother?”

Me: “…”

Dad: “Never mind, I’ll be ready when you get here.” *Click*

In my mother’s defense, she has a smartwatch she uses speech-to-text on, but still!

My store has a parrot who belongs to the owner and is our resident mascot. I help take care of him, and today, I decide to clip some herbs from the garden to take in for him as a treat. Unfortunately, I leave them at home and don’t realize until I am clocking in, so I call my parents who are still home. My dad picks up.

Me: “Hey, there’s a bag of herbs on the kitchen counter that I forgot to bring. Can you stick it in the fridge?”

Dad: “Wait. What, what, what was that?”

Me: “There’s a bag of herbs in the kitchen. Can you put it in the fridge?”

Dad: “There’s what?”

Me: “Herbs.”

Dad: “Okay.”

Me: “Can you put them in the fridge?”

Dad: “Where are they?”

Me: “On the counter.”

Dad: “In the kitchen?”

Me: “Yup.”

Dad: “Uh, where?”

Me: “In a small plastic bag.”

Dad: “Okay, I see, it’s like some kind of powder—”

Me: “No? Fresh herbs. The ones I picked this morning.”

Dad: “It’s in, like, a green-type bag—”

Me: “No… small. Plastic. Ziploc.”

Dad: “Ah, all right, I see it. What should I do with them?”

Me: *Pauses* “Put them in the fridge, please.”

Dad: “Okay.”

Me: “Okay. Thank you.”

Finally, we finally hang up. I immediately turn to my coworker.

Me: “Wow, that was like taking a customer call.”

I have a lot of sensory issues. One thing I can’t stand is the way a lot of fabrics feel slimy or prickly on my skin, so if I touch a fabric and it “feels” bad, there is no way I am wearing that piece of clothing. My mother thought I was being fussy or awkward for my entire childhood, and even since I moved out to live my own life, she still seems to hold this belief. She is also convinced I don’t know how to dress “professionally” since every time I am at her house, it’s a weekend.

Mum: “I have this lovely new top; I got it from a great designer. I think you’ll love it.”

Me: *Instantly wary* “Oh?”

Mum: *Brightly* “Yes, let me get it. You can try it on.”

I know I will be badgered relentlessly if I don’t.

Me: “Let me see it first.”

Mum runs off and brings back something to this day I will only describe as a potato sack. It is dull brown and coarsely woven, has NO shaping, and has these tiny little snippets of fabric that might be sleeves? They are at most an inch long on top, with no under to the arm at all, with a thick wedge of thread from attachment in the armpit. I touch it and confirm that it doesn’t just LOOK like a potato sack, it FEELS like a potato sack, too!

Me: “I am not putting this on.”

Mum: “But… it’s designer.”

I look at it, look at her, and look at it again.

Me: “No.”

Mum: “But it’s perfect! It’s a designer shirt.”

Me: “Absolutely not.”

She did eventually wear me down enough to make me try it on. It was even worse wearing it than it had been looking at. That was when I found out how thick and rough the thread used was. My mother kept insisting that it was designer! As if that made it magically stop chafing and itching so awfully.

For those fearing for my sanity and my mothers’, I soon after introduced a long-needed “no means no” policy, where I informed her that if she was going to keep badgering me after the first no, I would get up and leave. It only took enforcing once before she stopped trying to force me into such awful clothes. She had found that not only do I stick to that, but it means if she finds something I actually do like, I will say yes! It also means now if she asks me to try on a costume for her new home-run museum, I can actually say yes, knowing that if she pulls something I hate out, my “no” will be accepted.