In the 1990s, my mother, like many women across America at the time, was a regular user of Cindy Crawford’s Shape Your Body, the VHS workout video. My mom is a lovely woman and very pretty, but she went into the workouts thinking that was all she needed to do to look like Cindy Crawford.

One Saturday morning, my sister and I heard the music of the VHS workout starting from our rooms. Five minutes in, we heard the VHS pause, followed immediately by the sounds of our mother panting loudly. My sister and I both wander into the room to see Mom sitting on the floor in front of the TV, covered in sweat.

Me: “Five minutes? That was fast.”

Sister: “Mom, you okay? You’re panting like a dog.”

Mom: *Between panting.* “It’s… a hard workout! You… haven’t tried it… so you don’t know.”

Me: “Well, good luck!”

Mom goes two weeks before trying the VHS again. This time she makes it to seven minutes.

Me: “Well done, Mom! New record!”

Sister: “We’re proud of you!”

Mom: “Shut up.”

A whole month passes, and Mom is back to five minutes again.

Mom: “That’s it, I’m returning this. It’s defective.”

Sister: “I don’t think you can. It’s been too long.”

Me: “What makes you think it’s defective?”

Mom: “It’s not working!”

Me: “But you’ve barely been trying.”

Mom: “I have!”

Me: “You’ve had it for almost two months, and you’ve done three five-minute workouts.”

Mom: “That’s how you know it’s defective! It should make you want to work out more! Not less!”

Sister: “What if the workout video had Kevin Costner instead?”

Mom: “Hmm… let’s just say your momma wouldn’t be working out to that video in the living room.”

Both Of Us: “Ewwww, Mom!”

I think I got this from a TV show, but I told my girls that the ice cream truck only played music when it was out of ice cream…

One day my sister asked her nieces:

Sister: “Oh, I hear the ice cream truck! Who wants some ice cream?!”

My oldest daughter turned to my sister and told her in a corrective tone:

Daughter: “Aunt [Sister’s Name], everyone knows the trucks only play music when they’re all out of ice cream…”

The look on her face as she stared at me, realizing what I had done, was pretty classic.

A few years later, my sister had kids of her own, and this time it’s my turn to hear the ice cream truck and ask my niece and nephew:

Me: “Who wants some ice cream?!”

Niece: “Aunt [My Name], everyone knows that’s the fish truck. They don’t sell ice cream…”

I can imagine the look on my face as I stared at my sister was similar to how she looked back then…

Our family (parents, two siblings, and I) is on a long road trip. This is before iPads or mobile screens, so we’re keeping occupied the old-fashioned way: games and talking. I can read books in the car, but my siblings get car sick from doing that, so my dad is sharing interesting facts from a book. 

Until he gets to a fact that sounds like he meddled with it:

Dad: “If you stretch out an adult blue whale from end to end on a professional basketball court… the game would be cancelled.”

Me: *Looking up from my book.* “Wait… that’s the fact?”

Dad: “Well, it would be cancelled, so I’m correct.”

Fourteen-Year-Old Brother: “Not necessarily true if there wasn’t a game scheduled at the time you were ruining that whale.”

Mom: “Gross!”

Fourteen-Year-Old Brother: “So it would be technically correct only based on timing.”

Dad: “If you took into account how often a game is played on the court, and how long it would take to clear away that much whale, it’s very likely that at least one game would be cancelled.”

Fourteen-Year-Old Brother: “That depends on…”

Cue a long and drawn-out argument of “technically correct” points that end up going nowhere except still resulting in a poor landlocked whale. Eventually, the argument dies down, and my little brother says:

Seven-Year-Old Brother: “I have a fun fact to share!”

We tell him to go for it.

Seven-Year-Old Brother: “If you took all the elephants on Earth and stacked them on top of each other… they would all die.”

Mom: “Okay, can we play something, anything, else, please?!”

CONTENT WARNING: Cancer

When my brother was eleven and I was ten, we became big siblings to our baby half-sister. Our dad and stepmom wanted us to bond with the baby, so they decided to give us money to babysit her when they went out for, like, thirty minutes at a time. My brother and I had been home alone plenty of times, and I think we were generally trusted to be fairly responsible kids.

The first time, my dad and stepmom went to the cafe around the corner to get a sandwich lunch. They weren’t gone for more than thirty minutes, and our sister had just started her nap.

A true comedy of errors ensued: my brother tried to fill up a glass of water in the sink but ended up spilling the glass on the kitchen floor. As he went to fill it up again, he ended up slipping in the water and falling down. As he fell down, he grabbed at me for support, but I’ve always been very small (I think I was like half his weight), so I fell down first, and the way we landed ended with me breaking the frame and one ear of my glasses, and my brother writhing around in pain.

My stepmom came in the door first to find me panicking, blind, unable to see, my brother with a twisted ankle (it took like two weeks to heal), and my baby sister crying.

The first time we babysat, she was five months old, I believe. The next time we babysat, she was nine months old, and I was hospitalized and later first diagnosed with cancer the next day, so…

I’ve been cancer-free for twelve years.

My sister is a teen now, and we still joke that she was bad luck as a baby.

Our British family is visiting the USA for the first time. Mum, Dad, my two siblings and I enter the lift from a high floor in a very tall hotel, and make our way down. We keep stopping, and more people get on every few floors.

Every time a new person boards, Dad can’t help but convey a ‘dad joke’ to his growing captive audience.

Dad: “Did you know that in England it’s called a lift, but in America it’s called an elevator? I guess people are just raised differently.”

Cue his entire family (myself included) groaning, and the strangers smirking slightly.

Dad: “Personally, I’ve never cared for elevators. In fact, I usually take steps to avoid them.”

Brother: “Okay, Dad, you can stop now.”

Dad: “That being said, I don’t trust stairs either. They’re always up to something.”

Sister: “Help.”

Me: “How many more floors to go?”

Mum: “Thirty-five.”

Me: *Squeaks.*

Suddenly, one of the other hotel guests, who is a complete stranger to us, turns and says to my dad in an American accent:

Stranger: “Conversely, I love elevators. I get to know people on a lot of different levels.”

Brother: “Oh no… It’s spreading.”

Sister: “Let me out! I don’t wanna catch it!”

We couldn’t all spread out into the lobby fast enough. Dad and his new friend swapped socials, and they were drinking beers in the hotel bar together that night, sparing the rest of us…