We all know that family member that can really embarrass us. For me it’s my mom. She is an incredibly nice person, but she doesn’t know when to stop.
Apparently, I’m in good company, because a user on reddit posted this question: “What’s the most embarrassing thing a parent has done to you?” and the internet woke up to post 14,000 comments!
Enjoy these 13 people who we all can relate to.
13. “Get off the phone MOM!”
For those who didn’t grow up in a time where you shared a phone with your parents, consider yourselves lucky.
For those who did…
Me: Hi, it’s Kayge! I was wondering if you were going to go to the mall tomorrow.
Girl I liked: Ummm, yea, I think so. It’s Saturday, so I usually go with my friends.
Me: Well, if you’re there, do you want to, y’know, meet somewhere and have lunch?
Girl I liked: Ummm, yea, that sounds good. Where do you want to go?
Me: Well, I was thinking…
Mom: Hello?
Me: (Yelling from upstairs) MOM, I’m on the phone!
Mom: (Through the phone) Kayge, are you on the phone? I was calling my friend Riva. She’s having some people over tomorrow and I wanted to know if she wanted any potato salad.
Me: (Yelling upstairs) MOM, I’m on the phone with (Girl I Liked), GET OFF!
Mom: If you want, I can make a little extra so you can take it to judo! I know how tired you get after class. Oooh, I hope I get to go with you this week, you look so handsome in your judo outfit!
Me: Sorry, my mom can be soooooo embarrassing.
…
Mom: I don’t think she’s there anymore, honey.
12. A vicious disease
That my parents died from AIDS in the early 90s when I was two, but no one acknowledges it.
Growing up, I never knew how my mother died, and I was told my father just “disappeared.” I remember throwing a tantrum in middle school for wanting to know what really happened to my parents. My aunt finally told me the truth. I remember crying alone in my room for hours. I’m pretty sure their deaths were the starting point for how strange my family is.
Anyhow, my family hasn’t mentioned it since then, and I’m now 27. As far as I know, we’ve never said the words HIV or AIDS aloud in my family. If it must be talked about, it’s “that disease” or something similar. My friends constantly wonder why I never mention my parents, and I still have hang ups telling people why/how they passed away.
It makes me feel so conflicted inside because I know I should have nothing to feel ashamed of, but my family and society make me feel my parents’ deaths should be swept under the rug.
11. Comfortable underwear
I was watching the Victoria Secret Fashion show. I was around eight so I was not interested in girls. But they were wearing underwear that looked comfortable. I knew I could find a pair in my dad’s drawer.
Now I didn’t have a mom, so this was from his girlfriend we didn’t know about. So me and my brother put a pair on, took everything else off, and started doing flips off the bunk bed.
My grandma hears all the commotion and walks into my dad’s room only to see me and my brother flipping off a bunk bed wearing nothing but girls’ underwear.
10. Last supper…
A decade or two ago I was at my grandmother’s house for Thanksgiving dinner. It was the first time in a while the whole clan had gathered at the table, so it was fully extended with all extension leaves being used.
Unfortunately, it was a somewhat cheaply made table, and once the turkey was placed in the center, it collapsed.
The center buckled under the weight and fell, causing both ends to rise up, sending the rest of the feast sliding toward the gaping maw. I managed to grab the mashed potatoes (my favorite dish), but everything else was a loss.
Since I was five years old I found it hilarious, though now that I’m older I can imagine how much that must’ve sucked.
9. Toying with himself
My nearly two-year-old son seems to love the rewarding experience of finding a lost toy together with either me or his Mum.
We’ll hear from the other room “Oh!” then a pause, some rummaging and then “Where, [For example] has Thomas gone?” He’ll sound more and more concerned before coming in and asking “Daddy (or Mummy) see Thomas!”—basically asking us to help him, which of course we do and usually find it with him.
What he doesn’t know is that we both know he spends a couple of minutes at the start of each day hiding a couple of his toys around the lounge, leaves it a while, and then pretends they’re lost.
What we don’t know is whether or not he can actually remember where he hid them. I assume he can’t, and so must applaud his initiative in creating a genuine problem to overcome together.
8. Shirtless hero!
When I was a senior in high school back in the day, I had accidentally left the lights on in my truck all day long and had to call my dad to come to my school and help me jump start the car.
Now, my father is 6’1 and has a very large belly. For some unknown reason, he shows up wearing nothing but cloth shorts and no shirt to try and jump start my car. In front of all my classmates.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, he did it again another time a few years earlier when my mother had sent him out to my school to come and give me a sandwich to eat before a big football game I was in.
The man’s boxers were literally longer than his shorts.
7. With a sister like that, who needs enemies?!
I was in a horrible place after losing my unborn child. That’s the exact moment my ex-husband chose to sue me for full custody of the other child. My sister consoled me and supported me through it all. I thought she was on my side. Until I realized just how deeply she had been betraying me this entire time. I don’t know if I can ever forgive her.
My sister talked my ex-husband into suing me for full custody at the exact moment I was unable to contest it properly. She also foddered his case with lies to make me look like a terrible mother, while simultaneously patting me on the back and consoling me that he was a terrible man.
He didn’t win, but the case made things contentious for us for years and made it impossible to grieve with my now husband because I was in survival mode to make sure I didn’t lose my daughter.
6. A horrible comeback…
Occasionally I would cut class in high school.
Typically, I would wait until my mom left for work and then go back home before heading out again.
This one day I saw her leave, so I went home. About ten minutes later the door opens so I book it into my closet. She comes upstairs and opens my bedroom door and proceeds to open the closet
Of course, she sees me and yells, “What are you doing home?”
I counter with, “Well what are YOU doing looking in MY closet??”
She took me to school ?
5. An unnecessary director’s commentary…
My mom went through this phase where she would talk out loud during movies, specifically about whatever is going on in the movie. S
he was also terrible at paying attention to what was going on, so often times what she was explaining was totally incorrect.
In addition, she would try to talk over the movie. Mom would occasionally have to yell to make sure that she was being heard over the action scenes.
Imagine, if you will, watching the aftermath of the stampede scene from The Lion King and the person next to you in the theater yelling out “SIMBA IS SAD BECAUSE HER DAD DIED!”
4. Friend bear!
Okay, so my daughter is now almost two and has long since moved into her own room. We have one of those video monitor things where you can see/hear the baby on this little TV thing or you can turn the picture off and just get sound. So one night maybe a month ago I’m sitting in bed, scrolling through Reddit or something, and I start hearing my daughter babbling to herself. Now, it’s really late, like one or two in the morning. Much later than she is ever awake unless something is wrong and she is sick or cutting a tooth or something.
So I turn the picture on the monitor on and see her standing up in her crib facing sort of diagonally away from the camera. I can see her hands in front of her but only like half of her face. Now is a good time to mention that we have been teaching her ASL since she was about three months old, and she has been responding and conversing in sign since about ten months. I can see her signing things like “nice,” “silly,” and “fun” and, oddly enough, “no,” “don’t like” and “bear.” Of course being the good and loving mother I am (and really not wanting to deal with an overly sleepy baby in the morning) I get up to see what the heck she is doing.
When I get to her room she is still standing up and signing/babbling towards the far corner of her room. I ask her what she is doing and who she is talking to and she signs/says (as best as she can) “friend” which she does with her whole hands and not just her index fingers and signs “bear” again. I tell her that no, see Bear (who is actually one of her stuffed toys) is in bed behind her not in the corner of the room but she just giggles at me and signs/says “silly” and “mommy.”
I can see she is wide awake so I sit down in the rocker next to her bed and try to figure out what woke her up but all she will tell me is “friend” and “bear” and occasionally duck down like she is hiding and making shhh noises. I finally get fed up and ask her who Friend Bear is and her response literally gave me chills because she doesn’t speak well yet but she managed to say, very clearly and with the most serious face a 20-month-old can pull off, “No name, no name, shhhhh.”
Well now I am well and truly fre*ked out so I tell her to ask “No Name Friend Bear” to go home because it is too late to play and I did what any good loving mother would do. I gave her a pacifier, went back to my room, turned off the monitor entirely and hid under the covers in my room where my good and loving husband would protect me from nameless invisible bears.
3. Gumball videos…
My little sister is 10 years younger than me. When she was in about sixth grade, she’d invite the neighbor over and they’d use my mom’s laptop after she went to bed.
Mom checked her browsing history one day and there were pages and pages of adult video searches of really specific stuff.
My favorite was probably “Amazing World of Gumball adult videos.” The best part was when she later asked my dad to borrow his laptop.
Jokingly he said, “Sure, long as you don’t look up inappropriate material.”
She got really defensive and said “Uh! I would never do that, dad!”
2. The brother that didn’t exist…
It’s so strange, growing up I knew I had a brother and I knew he was hit and ended by a car walking home, but I don’t know anything about him aside from that. I’ve seen his pictures, I know what he looked like. I don’t know anything about his personality, his likes or his dislikes, the type of music he listened to. I once found his comics in my mom’s closet when I was younger, but that was about it.
It is almost like it’s just a story and he wasn’t a real person. It wasn’t until my grandfather died about 11 years ago that my mother and I walked to his grave. She broke down into an inaudible mess, and it really hit me for the first time ever that he was a real person, as crazy as that sounds. I don’t understand that pain of losing a child, but it hurt to see my mom mourn like that, almost as if it had just happened.
The only time since then he was ever mentioned was by my dad a few months ago. Out of my mother, father, and sisters, I’m the tallest. My dad told me how the only one of us who was taller than me was Jimmy, and how he always seemed to keep growing, how he probably would have towered over me. I almost cried. I wish I got to know him.
1. The sister
my dad watched his mother die of a ruptured gallbladder when he was 12 and still remembers it vividly. My sister, one day, randomly gets up almost an hour after she’s gone to bed and goes up to him. The conversation went like this:
Sister: “Daddy, your mommy died in a red sweater, jeans, sneakers and with her hair in a ponytail, right? And her hair was blonde?”
Dad: Drops book he’s reading and stares, wide-eyed, and then says, “Yes.”
Sister: “What color were her eyes?”
Dad: “Blue. Why?”
Sister: “Oh, she doesn’t have them anymore, just empty sockets. I was curious.”
And she goes right back to bed.
Okay, I didn’t need to sleep tonight or anything…
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