There are times when our own family members can really drive us crazy. They have strange habits, like meddling all the time, or crazy ideas that can make even the easiest days very chaotic. Readers told us about their “pain” in these 10 stories.
“Every morning at 7 a.m., my mom calls to make sure I’m awake. She called one morning but didn’t say anything. She was just heavy breathing. I hurried over to her house because I thought something was wrong. I saw her sitting on the couch with a defeated look when I got there. There were empty coffee cups and a mess of craft supplies all around her. She sighed and said, “I just needed to get your attention.” It made sense.
“My dad always turns every choice into a deep philosophical argument.” When I told him I was switching from mint to cinnamon toothpaste, he got very excited and said it meant a big change in my personal philosophy. When I told him about a job offer, he made it sound like a “life-changing” decision and used a dramatic PowerPoint to talk about the morality of career choices. My mom gave me a letter from a career coach that my dad had hired in secret to “help me with my existential dilemmas.” A note at the end of the letter said, “P.S. Dad still thinks mint is better.” Now that I have a career coach and mint toothpaste, I’m ready for Dad’s next philosophical adventure: he wants to look at my vacation choices!”
“Every holiday meal, my cousin cooks himself because he thinks he is a gourmet chef.” This year, he made a 12-course meal with words that no one could understand. We all got food poisoning and had to stay in the hospital together for a week—talk about a “family bonding” experience?
“My brother fixed my leaky faucet by himself.” He broke the cabinet door while trying to stop the water from getting into my kitchen, which flooded it. His video of him trying to fix something went viral, and now he’s a minor internet star.
“My wife’s mother won’t stop sending me the newest health supplements.” There was a bag of chalk powder in this week’s “Super Detox Powder.” The taste was more like sidewalk than healthy food as I mixed it into my smoothie. It turned out that MIL sent me her son’s art supplies by mistake. I had a chalky smoothie and a funny story to tell my family at the next get-together.
