My eldest sister has always been enabled by our parents who have constantly dug her out of holes she’s gotten herself into, usually forking up cash to pay her bills, mortgage, rent, and bankruptcy. She’s a spendthrift and has taken over my father’s garage with stored furniture because she had bought more.

I am having a discussion with my parents about building a garage on the back of my small property. All I want to know is if Dad has an idea of how much it would cost.

Dad: “What do you need another garage for? What’s wrong with the one you’ve got?”

Me: “We’re thinking about moving [Husband]’s workshop into it so we can use the garage for our cars. [Son] also wants to set up a gym; he might be getting a car soon, too.”

Mum: “Oh, it would be perfect to move all of [Sister]’s stuff into!” 

Me: “No, it’s not for—”

Dad cuts me off.

Dad: “You can build it double-storey so your sister can move in!”

Me: “No, she’s not moving in.”

Dad: “Why not? She’s being evicted again.”

Me: “Because I am just trying to make space to park two cars, and she has at least six, not to mention all the rest of the junk she has. She’s not moving into my place.”

Dad: “But she’s looking at over $700 a week in rent because she needs a big property to store all of her stuff. She needs a house and at least three double garages.”

Me: “I only have one garage, and we haven’t even decided to build another one yet. All of her cars will have to be parked at your place.”

Mum: “Oh! Maybe there’s not enough room.”

I remind myself never to try to discuss things that my parents can weasel my sister into. They already know that her husband has tried to take over their house in the past, which is why they don’t want them to move in with them.

When my brother was little, he caught a flu that developed into pneumonia. He was prescribed Tylenol (paracetamol/acetaminophen) for the symptoms and an antibiotic that came in pill or syrup form. He was always determined to prove that he was grown up, so he insisted that he was old enough to take pills instead of syrup. Even though he was told that the antibiotic pills were bigger than most pills, he insisted that could take them.

After he had been sick for a while without much improvement, my mother began to notice something odd: when she gave him his medicine, he’d take the Tylenol right there in the kitchen and then bring the antibiotic to his room. While she was trying to figure out how to ask him about this, he walked up to her.

Brother: “Mom? What would happen if I didn’t take my medicine?”

Mom: “Well, you’d get even sicker, you’d probably go to the hospital, and then you’d die.”

Brother: *Going pale* “…Oh.”

A while later, she found him on his bedroom floor, bawling over a container of all the antibiotic pills he’d stashed to avoid taking them, wailing about how he didn’t want to die.

They went back to the doctor and got the antibiotic in syrup form. My brother made a full recovery and never forgot the importance of taking your medication.

I woke up today around 8:00 am to get ready to work as a Medical Assistant. I walked upstairs to prepare my to-go lunch. My sister was sitting in the kitchen area. I opened the fridge and noticed the cabbage was rotten. It had black spots and smelled sour. I was about to throw it away when my sister stopped me.

Sister: “What are you doing with my cabbage?”

Me: “Throwing it out.”

Sister: “Why?”

Me: “It’s rotten.”

Sister: “No, it’s not.”

I showed her the black spots and sour smell.

Sister: “That’s not rotten.”

Me: “What? Yes, it is.”

Sister: “It’s my cabbage, and I know this isn’t rotten.”

Me: “What?”

I was flabbergasted.

Sister: “Pay me back for the cabbage, then.”

Me: “What?”

Sister: “If you’re throwing out my cabbage, pay for it, then.”

My God. What was I supposed to do, let her eat the cabbage? I would be the s***tiest little brother if I handed my sister the cabbage.

Sister: “If I eat it now, then it’s fine, right?”

She proceeded to swipe the cabbage out of my hand and started eating it. I couldn’t even watch the show, so I went upstairs. She has major stomach pain as we speak.

Moral of the story: don’t eat rotten food.

My mother asked me to help her set up the printer on her first home computer. 

This was the mid-1990s. I was in my early twenties, I’d had an IBM computer since I was sixteen, and I’d been earning a good salary as an IT consultant for the past couple of years. My mum, though, had trouble accepting that I could possibly be a fully functioning adult.

She had the computer all set up and her copy of “PCs For Dummies” at the ready. 

She wanted me to walk her through the steps in her “For Dummies” book so that she could reference it if she needed to do it again, so we turned to the section on installing a printer. 

She had already managed to connect the cables, and all we needed to do was set up the driver. This was back in the days before USB and plug-and-play; the driver came on a 3.5-inch floppy disc and had to be installed before we could use the printer.

The book said to open the installation file and run it.

Mother: “How do we do that?”

Me: “We have to put the disc with the driver in the disc drive, and then we can find the right file.”

Mother: “How do we do that?”

Me: “We put it in here.”

I reached to put the disc in the drive.

Mother: “STOP! How do I make sure it’s the right way round?”

Me: “It will only go in one way, and this is the right way round.”

For those of you unfamiliar with 3.5-inch discs, they were hard-shelled and had a little spring-loaded door at the front that slid out of the way to let the drive read the disc, and there was a notch on one corner that ensured it would only go into the drive one way

Mother: “What if you’re wrong?”

Me: “I’m not. This is the way they go in. This is the only way it will go in.”

Mother: “Show me where it says which way to do it in the book.”

Me: “It doesn’t say that in the book.”

Mother: “Why not? It has to tell you; otherwise, how would people know?”

Me: “People just know. It’s not something they put in books because it’s so obvious.”

Mother: “Show me where it is in the book.”

I double-checked the book. Even the “For Dummies” series assumed that you could work out how to insert a floppy disc for yourself.

Me: “It doesn’t say. But this is the right way to do it.”

Mother: “How can you be sure?”

Me: “Because I have been working with computers for eight years and for the past two I have been paid a lot of money to do it.”

Mother: “But why can’t you show me in the book?”

Me: “Because it isn’t in the book.”

Mother: “But why isn’t it in the book?”

Me: “Because they don’t think they need to tell you something so basic. Now, can I put it in the drive so we can get your printer working?”

Mother: “No. I am not going to let you until you show me where it says in the book.”

In desperation, I went through the printer manual and the PC manual in the hope that they would contain something that might convince her. No such luck.

Me: “I can’t show you, because it isn’t there. Now, will you just let me put it in so that we can do this?”

Mother: “No.”

Me: “I do this every day. Why won’t you let me just do it?” 

My eleven-year-old sister sensed the frustration and came into the room. 

Sister: “It’s okay, Mum, we did this in computer class at school. It goes in like this.”

She put the disc into the drive in exactly the way I had been trying to, without the slightest objection from Mum.

Mother: “Now, why couldn’t you show me how to do it like that?”

And that’s how I learned that my mum was more prepared to trust a kid with the benefit of forty minutes on a school computer than an adult twice her age who worked with computers for a living.

I added someone completely at random on my Facebook because she had made a lot of thought-inspiring comments on a number of posts I had seen.

I had her on my friends list for the better part of six months or so before we had this conversation one day.

Friend: “Well, my girlfriend [Girlfriend] said…”

Me: “That’s funny… I have a sister named [Girlfriend].”

Friend: “Haha! Does she live in New York City?”

Me: “Actually, she does.”

It turned out IT ACTUALLY WAS MY SISTER!