That Is Her Tragedy

My mother has always hated it when my grandmother complains about something that someone else does, but when it’s pointed out that she has done the same thing she always says, “It’s different for us.”

My sister has just moved into a new subdivision. All of the houses had one or two-car attached garages and very little in the way of landscaping. A few weeks after the move, we head to her place for a visit and we notice that one of the houses now has planted garden beds. One of the beds is across the front of their double garage doors.

Mum: *Angrily* “Look at that; they have planted bushes across the front of their garage doors. You know what they are going to do.”

I don’t see why she’s so angry.

Me: “Yeah, they’re going to turn the garage into rooms.”

Mum: “Well, it’s not right; they bought the house with a garage and it should stay as a garage, not be used as a room. It makes their house bigger than everyone else’s.”

Me: “But you turned your garage into a room.”

Mum: “It’s different for us. We built the garage in the first place; they bought the house with a garage.”

She didn’t mention that she and dad had extended their house until it was the biggest in the street, and she gets indignant when anyone points out how much she sounds like her mother.