I manage support for mainframe computers and have done so for many years. My kids have grown up around a great deal of tech, but I’ve never taught them anything specifically related to mainframe.

I am out shopping with my oldest daughter, who is a teen, when I got a call. Since we are close to the office and it is a weekend, I just take her in with me. She can read a book and wait until the problem is fixed. It’s not uncommon when you’re the support lead, so she knows the drill.

As often is the case, one problem leads to another problem. We’ve been in the office about three hours by this point, and there are now three of us support staff in the office, plus my daughter.

All of a sudden, my daughter gets up and walks over to where my employee is working. Though he is the youngest of us three, he has at least a decade on my daughter.

Daughter: *Pointing to something on the screen* “That job is blocking up the queue. It’s sorting the records by time, but it’s trying to recalculate all the time to daylight saving and that takes longer. Just delete it and tell the Red team that they need to run job 8-B. Job 8-A only gets run on the night daylight saving switches over, and it’ll be replaced when [project] finishes, anyway. The problems on [system 1 and 2] are cascaded because job 8-A’s mucking up the times in the records in real time.”

All three of us turn to look at her.

Me: “[Daughter], why do you think that’s the problem?”

Daughter: “It’s the same problem you had on CICS4 last week.”

I may talk about my work in front of my kids more than I realised. Yes, she was right.

This story is part of our Best Of August 2021 roundup!

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I’m on a grocery trip with my mother. The shopping list is not nearly as long as usual, and she describes it as “sketchy.” A few minutes after we get into the store, I get a look at the list, and it’s mostly foodstuffs and some consumables.

Me: “When you said the shopping list was sketchy, I thought it was going to be like bleach and trash bags or something.”

It takes a moment for her to process what I said, but when she does, she starts laughing.

Mom: “You’re awful!”

I’m a young adult living on my own, and my mom and I haven’t had a chance to see each other in person for a while. When we both have a day off, we agree to meet up around 5:00 pm to just catch up and see each other again. Due to my odd sleep schedule, I wake up extremely early that morning, and around 11:00 am, I find myself the victim of a caffeine crash. I set an alarm for 3:00 pm and lay down for a nap.

The next thing I know, I wake up with my phone on the bed underneath me and the alarm blaring. I’m not surprised; I must have hit snooze in my sleep and rolled on top of it, which happens sometimes. What is surprising is looking at my phone and finding that it is 5:45 pm.

I immediately call my mom, about to apologize like my life depends on it. No answer. I send her a text. No answer. At this point, I’m scared that she is really mad at me for being this late.

A few minutes later, she calls me back.

Me: “I am so sorry! I swear I didn’t mean to sleep that long!”

Mom: “It’s okay! I was calling to apologize because I fell asleep while doing laundry and just woke up.”

Needless to say, we rescheduled our visit.

Dear readers,

Today is National Son and Daughter Day in the US! Everyone is someone’s son, daughter, or non-binary kid, and everyone has some strange or funny stories about the relationship offspring have with their parents.

In honor of this day, we’ve dug into the recesses of the Sons & Daughters tag for 17 stories about weird and memorable antics between parents and their kids!

Sweet Revenge – Hits from Gilmore Girls: “I have no patience for jam hands!”

Not Being Five Makes Them All Sixes And Sevens – Kids are often very honest. Sometimes too honest.

Not Raising Them To Be Trash – And NAR’s Parent Of The Week Award goes to…

(more…)

I visit my mom and stepdad for a few days to celebrate my birthday. For my birthday dinner, I request Cuban sandwiches and to help Mom make an apple pie. Once we’re finished with the sandwiches, Mom and I get to work on the pie. Shortly, the apples are peeled and we’re cutting them into pieces and putting them into the crust. I keep popping pieces into my mouth instead of the pie.

My mom addresses me in a tone that says she knew this was inevitable but she’s still aggravated.

Mom: “You’re supposed to be helping me make the pie!”

Me: “Mom… I’ve been ‘helping’ you make food like this for over thirty years!”