(When I am a kid, my family — parents, two brothers, and me — live in an apartment. One night, we have some family friends over. The adults are in the dining room laughing and talking while the kids are all in the bedroom goofing around. From the dining room, it is a straight shot back to the bedroom, so the door is opened and the adults can mostly see everything. We have a bunk bed that one of my brothers and I share and a toddler bed for our little brother. We also have those pop-up parachute-fabric tents that you can create mazes out of. My brother decides the best thing in the world would be to flip one of the tents on its roof and jump off the top bunk into it in his stocking feet. What the adults hear:)

Brother: “Watch this!”

(They hear the bed creak, followed by a thump as he hits the ground. Then, silence.)

Me: “Um, maybe you should go show that to Mom.”

(Mom, whose back is currently to the bedroom, glances at the family friend.)

Mom: “Do I want to know?”

(My brother went running down the hall to tell her all about it. He’d ended up smacking his face on the metal on our little brother’s toddler bed and given himself a bloody nose. All in all, not the worst injury he’s had. He probably wouldn’t have had as much issue if he hadn’t decided to jump into the tent with his socks still on.)

(My two two-year-olds are getting ready for bed. [Toddler #2] is in the bedroom with my husband, while [Toddler #1] is running down the hall to the bedroom. [Toddler #2] runs to the door and closes it just before her sister gets to it, effectively locking her out of the bedroom.)

Toddler #1: *knocking on the door* “Papa! Papa, let me in!”

Toddler #2: “Papa can’t help you now! Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

My husband and I went away for a weekend, so we asked his 17-year-old brother to check in on our dog and two cats in our absence. He agreed and off we went on our little vacation. When we returned, I noticed the bed had been stripped. I asked why and he said it was because one of the cats sprayed the bed. They’d never done it before, but I chalked it up to a kitty protesting our absence.

After that, I kept finding that things were not as I remembered them. I couldn’t explain what was happening but certain things just seemed… off.

I was taking a shower one day when, without looking, I reached for my shampoo only to find it on another shelf. My husband suggested that maybe I had moved it without thinking.

Another day, I went to make a sandwich but the lunch meat was gone. I knew I’d just bought a new pack two days before, so I asked my husband if he had eaten it. I told him my feelings about things around the house but he brushed them off, saying I must not be remembering things correctly.

Still another time, my husband and I were watching a movie before leaving for some errands. When we came home that night, a different channel was on. He started to believe something was off, so we started double checking that all the doors and windows were locked before we left the house.  

One night, my husband’s brother came over for dinner and brought his girlfriend — without asking, but that’s another annoyance.

After dinner, we were sitting outside when his girlfriend excused herself to use the toilet. I watched her walk inside and up the stairs, and then heard the bathroom door close, shortly followed by the sound of the toilet flushing.

She came back downstairs and rejoined us. I told my husband’s brother and his girlfriend that they would have to leave and would not be welcomed back for a long time.

He asked why and I replied, “The cat peed on the bed?” The girl turned deep red and stomped to the car, followed quietly by her boyfriend.

My husband was confused and started getting mad at me for being so rude. I pointed out that the girl had known exactly where the toilet was, despite not being given a tour or directions, and I started listing all the weird things that had happened since our vacation.

My husband called his brother, who confessed that he and his lady friend had been using our house as a lovenest while we were out.

We had our locks changed and refused to give a spare key to anyone. When his mother asked why she wasn’t getting a key, I told her what her son had done. This was over a year ago and I think he’s still mad at me.

(My younger brother is the math and science nerd of the family while I’m the artist. It’s a running joke with my friends and family that I am clueless when it comes to anything math-related. He’s out helping a friend study for an exam and texts me an update.)

Brother: “Status update: we made it past sound waves and we’re on Coulomb’s Law.”

Me: “You say that like I understand any of it.”

Brother: “We do wave thing; now do electricity.”

(I rent out a house with four other women, one of whom is my sister, who’s ended up not having the best relationship with the other two people. She’s never done anything outright horrible, but has an air of entitlement and does little things that bother us sometimes. One of the things that has bothered us the most is whenever she asks to borrow our personal cars. Hers was wrecked by her boyfriend two years ago and, since I sometimes have “no good reason” to NOT allow her to borrow the car while I’m using it, I’ve allowed her until recently. She’s never been in a wreck herself, but she always treats my car like it is her own garbage bin, always claims she needs it for an “emergency” when really she wants to go shopping, and never, never, NEVER tops up the tank. She once borrowed it for a full week without telling me until I confronted her about my almost-empty tank of gas. I always let her walk all over me until one day I put my foot down and set some rules, which doesn’t exactly work, so I take away the “deal” we never made of sharing my car, telling her to finally look for her own. What does she do? She goes and asks our roommates, of course. [Roommate #1] gives her a shot, but refuses after my sister is gone past one am and won’t answer her cell phone when our roommate calls to see if she is all right. [Roommate #2] gives her a hard no from the beginning. So, my sister has been forced to take a mix of public transportation and ride-hailing apps, despite having a valid license. I have always thought it was because she worked out it was cheaper that way, despite the passive-aggression she always throws my way whenever a bus is late during her route or the comments about how inconvenient it is to catch a [Rideshare]. That was all until [Roommate #3] moves in. Literally within the first week of settling in, while she’s playing a video game in the living room and [Roommate #2] and I are in the kitchen, my sister approaches her:)

Sister: “Hey, [Roommate #3]! Listen. Huge favor. Would it be okay to let me borrow your car?”

Me: *not thinking I heard right* “Wait, wha–”

Roommate #3: “Uh, sure? Why? When?”

Sister: “Oh, I was–“

Me: “[Roommate #3]! Seriously? You don’t have to.”

Sister: “She already said yes.”

Roommate #3: *raises an eyebrow at the both of us* “Um… Is there something I’m not getting? Do you, what, have a DUI?”

Roommate #2: *muttering low enough just for me to hear* “Nope, just her ex.”

Sister: “What? Are you f****** serious? Do I look like someone who would have a DUI?”

Roommate #3: “All right, sorry, jeez. But, yeah. Unless you have a history of f***** up cars–“

Sister: “I don’t.”

Roommate #3: “Okay, so, when do you need it?”

Sister: “I was thinking right now?”

Me: *getting up* “Okay, no. [Sister], that’s just rude to try and practically bully [Roommate #3] into giving you her car.”

Sister: “But she said yes!”

Roommate #3: *shrugs* “That I did. And sure. My key is the one with the green keychain.”

(My sister thanks her profusely and goes to get ready to leave while [Roommate #2] and I share a look, completely floored, not only over how brazen my sister was, but how careless [Roommate #3] seems to be. Ultimately, we just shake our heads and allow this incredibly poor idea pan out. My sister leaves, dressed up and ready to go… before coming back in, seeming annoyed.)

Sister: “You’re out of gas.”

(I try to stifle laughter over the irony.)

Roommate #3: “What?”

Sister: “I said, you’re out of gas.”

Roommate #3: “Did it not turn on? I put five bucks in it yesterday.”

Sister: *confused* “Er, no. I was able to turn on your car, but the gas gauge is basically sitting on the ’empty’ side.”

Roommate #3: “Ohhh. Psh. Yeah. It does that, but that baby’s got another couple miles in it. Don’t worry; it can make it to the closest gas station and you can just put in how much money you need for gas.”

(Note that this entire time, [Roommate #3] hasn’t even looked up from her video game to address my sister fully, who’s staring at her like she’s just grown another head. After a moment, my sister sneers and huffs out a “fine” before storming back out. A while later, while most of us are talking and hanging out, my sister comes in and hands [Roommate #3] a receipt.)

Sister: “Here. For the gas.”

Roommate #3: *looks at the receipt and eyes go wide* “WHOA! You filled the whole tank?!”

Sister: “Yes, and you can pay me back whenever yo–“

(She doesn’t get to finish the sentence and, thankfully, [Roommate #3] seems to never have heard it since she was too busy bolting up and almost tackling my sister to the ground with a bearhug.)

Roommate #3: “Thank you, thank you, thank you so much! You didn’t have to do that! You can borrow my car whenever you want!”

Sister: “…”

(It didn’t take long for us to learn that [Roommate #3] came from working-class parents where she picked up a lot of penny-pinching techniques and habits, one of them being to only pay for only the amount of gas necessary to get from point A to point B. She legitimately thought that’s how most people did it, and her mind was blown when she found out none of us made the “common, new-driver mistake” of running out of gas on the freeway from overestimating how much was left in the tank. This meant that eventually when all the gas my sister put in dwindled, [Roommate #3] kicked back into her old habit of just paying what she needed, confused as to why this had suddenly become a pet-peeve to my sister’s. Other than her unique money-saving tactics and her obliviousness, she’s become an awesome housemate. My sister made it through borrowing her car for about a month until [Roommate #3] confronted her about dirtying up her car — “I mean, you could pay for the car cleaning, at least? Then you can drive my car again. Fair?” — and she magically found her own money to get a used car, herself.)