Me: “I’m calling about an overdue electricity account.“

Customer: “You can’t cut me off! I have three or four children!“

My mum comes round to see our new flat.

Mum: “Why do all your candles have these little lids?”

Me: “Oh, I never really realised. I guess it’s to stop things getting on the candle, catching fire. I never really thought about it before.”

Mum: “Seems daft to me.”

Me: “Maybe. I just like them because they smell nice.”

Mum: “They do, they really do.”

I end up buying her one of the candles she likes the most, and the next time I visit her:

Me: “Smells nice in here. Do I smell your new candle?”

Mum: “Hmm, yes, it’s really nice. But have you noticed it smells a bit when you first light it?”

Me: “No? What of?”

Mum: “Well, burnt hair.”

Me: “Hmmm, do you check if Morris (the cat) gets his hair on it?”

Mum: “Oh, I was dusting the other day, and I saw hairs in there. I didn’t even think. They should make something to stop that.”

Me: “Yeah, I think they do, you know. Maybe you have one already?”

She figured it out pretty quickly; the little lids are no longer as “daft” as she thought.

I am currently working in the afterschool program attached to the school where I work. Parents are charged $13 a day for a total of three hours of care. We include snacks, help with homework, and an activity with the kids. We have a no-school day coming up where all the teachers still come in for staff meetings and training. We have a particular mom who likes to complain about everything, and her kid isn’t well-behaved. She thinks $13 is too much for a total of three hours. 

Mom: “So, you are closed next Friday? That must be nice for you. Silly that they’re giving you a day off and making us find separate childcare.”

Me: “Actually, we still have to come in. We’ll be having meetings and training all day.”

Mom: “Don’t know why they’re closing for an entire day. I have a full-time job, you know. I need someone to watch my kid. Actually, would either you or [Coworker] watch her for me?”

Me: “Sorry. Again, we don’t have the day off. We still have to come in. It’s still a full day for us.”

Mom: “Ridiculous. I have no idea what I’m going to do.”

She leaves and I turn to my coworker. 

Me: “If she thinks $13 is bad for three hours, she wouldn’t have been happy when I told her I’d charge her more than that for an hour to watch her kid.”

My mother taught me to drive. This was fine, except she always complained that I was too far over to the right. I used the oil trail in the middle of the lane as my guide to where the middle of the car should be, but that was too far to the right, so I moved over to the left just to stop her from complaining.

Me: “Is this better?”

Mom: “You’re still too close on this side.”

I got used to driving with the left side of the car about an inch away from the left side of the lane whenever she was the passenger because it was easier than listening to her complain. It was uncomfortably close, but other drivers sensibly passed me with an extra bit of clearance, so I wasn’t too put out.

This worked fine until one day when we were driving some visiting family around, and my mother was sitting in the left rear seat.

Mom: “You’re driving too close to this side.”

I was deployed to Louisiana as a volunteer disaster responder after Hurricane Katrina. The damage was so great, and the media coverage so thorough, that an unprecedented number of people volunteered for the first time to come down south and help out.

My job at the time was shuttle driver; I ferried volunteers and their luggage back and forth from the headquarters building and the local airport. Quite late one evening, I was called to pick up a young college student whose flight had just arrived.

When I got to the airport, she was standing next to an older woman who, as it turned out, was her mother. This woman got in a car and followed us to the HQ, followed us INTO the HQ, and then tagged after us while I signed in the new volunteer and showed her where she would be sleeping.  

Mom took one look at the sleeping room — three rows of snoring volunteers on rickety cots or on blankets on the floor — and hit the roof.

Mom: *Hissing* “You are not staying here!”

She grabbed her daughter by the arm and frog-marched her back out to the car.

This woman — upon learning that her lovely child had signed up to do relief work — had driven down to Louisiana from Ohio in her car, timing it so that she could meet her daughter’s plane and check us out.

I guess we didn’t pass muster. I felt so sorry for the girl; I wonder if she ever managed to get out from under Mom’s thumb.