Joss Rufus is an award-winning journalist and the author of numerous books, including Party of One: The Loners’ Manifesto and Unworthy: How to Stop Hating Yourself. Rufus’ drawings have appeared in Oakland Magazine and in such books as Europe Off the Wall, The Goddess in the Office, and The World Holiday Book.
My family loves to rag on each other, and one of my dad’s favorites was always “No. You’re ugly and your mother dresses you funny.” usually said in response to something like “Dad, can we get ice cream?”
We all found it hysterical, but we found out the hard way that our friends were totally unable to pick up on the sarcasm at our house, and therefore though we lived some sort of terribly sad existence.
Is “You’re ugly and your mother dresses you funny” some kind of cultural reference, or just a universal dad thing? My own dad frequently says that to the cat when she’s misbehaving.
I grew up thinking it was a quote from Ghostbusters, so, it’s probably both.
The Ghostbusters II quote in question is, “You’re short, your bellybutton sticks out too far, and you’re a terrible burden on your poor mother.” My partner says it to my cat all the time.
I thought “you’re ugly and your mom dresses you funny” was from The Sandlot, but it may just be an old chestnut of dads everywhere.
My *mom* used to say to us “Your mother dresses you funny.” Happy memories! 🙂
I just laughed so hard I upset my lap/chest cat. That is so great.
It was on a coffee mug from the late 70’s or early 80’s. I think someone copied it from a kid’s school drawing.
Same. Now vicious teasing is the only way I express true affection for people.
I’ve had a lot of boyfriends wonder why my family is so loving yet so cruel to each other.
Same!! Almost instantly after I married I started referring to Mr. Delperro as “that jerk I married,” and have horrified many people.
Oh man, my dad used to make up songs for us when we were kids (cute!), but they were basically murder ballads (oh) about running us over with trucks and covering us with honey so the ants would eat us. We thought they were hilarious! Our friends were horrified and their usual response was, “That explains a lot.”
My maternal grandmother wrote a song about a young woman drowning in a lake that she’d sing loudly whenever my aunt whined while getting her hair washed as a little kid. It’s still a perennial party favorite song in the family.
Ha! That’s brilliant.
We insult our children all the time. And play them off against each other, eg,
Them: ‘Mummy, why does [other child] get to have [something I want/don’t have]?’
Me: I love her more/He’s the favourite child.
Thankfully (?) they just roll their eyes.
I tell them that they smell, and laugh at them when they’re having tantrums. If anything, I want them to grow up to be able to laugh at themselves. It’s a valuable character trait. So far, they seem to have a fairly high self-esteem and a very dry sense of humour. I’m generally pretty pleased with the results up to this point.
Please post the lyrics!
My father had his own version of “I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy” that started, “I’m a Yankee Doodle Fascist….” I sang it that way in elementary school because that’s how I thought it went. : There was also his “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire….” that substituted the word “children” for chestnuts.” I also thought that was how that one went.
My grandfather used to sing a bedtime song for us that went:
Oh say can you see
Any bedbugs on me
If you do, catch a few
And I’ll fry them for you
I’m guessing maybe that came from his time in the Army– we always loved it, but I’ve never heard it anywhere else.
Dad was never in the military, but he was a kid in the 1940s. His version went “…if you do, pick a few, they’re so easy to chew”.
Also, my mom used to wake me up for school with The Police lyrics (“Is anybody alive in here? Is anybody alive in here? Nobody but us.”)
Once my husband and I were walking down the street in Paris (we lived there for a year) and we passed a vendor selling roasted chestnuts, and I intoned “chestnuts roasting in a garbage can” and he laughed so hard. It’s hard to get a good laugh out of him!! We still recall that memory ten years later 🙂
My only verbal form of communication with my brother is a mix of sarcasm, insults, fake arguments about conspiration theories, and obscure book references. We treat pet names (“darling”) as disdain. People who don’t know us are usually horrified but too polite to say anything. People who know only one of us but should be used to our ways have pleaded us to
stop arguing!to which we both reacted totally flabbergasted. We’re not arguing, that’s an expression of affection! Even though we would never admit to it! He’s a pathetic jerk, after all.I should do one of these except with anxiety and except I don’t know how to draw cartoons. Without my mom I would never even have known to be terrified of: standing behind a horse and getting kicked in the head, getting suctioned to the filter intake in a pool and drowning, riding a bike that was too big for me and getting hit by a car because I couldn’t pedal away, dying of radon in the basement, or many other things. I would have gone through my childhood just worrying about killer bees and quicksand like an unprepared chump.
Oh man, I think if anything this happened in reverse with me and my mom. I was the type of kid who was constantly asking What If and forcing her to postulate about all kinds of worst-case scenarios (what if somehow the sky lights on fire? what if a robber kidnaps me in my sleep? what if the reservoir overflows?) I would be shocked if I didn’t inadvertently give her some kind of complex.
We had to read about the Jonestown flood in class and I freaked out that Folsom Dam was going to burst and we would all die. My mom got me a copy of the flood response map that says we have a whole 24 hours to get out of that happens. Somewhere we have a map of the various radiation effects of a nuclear bomb at the capital because that’s what frightened my little brother. Poor moms.
WHOA, i am also terrified of 3 out of those 4 things (not so much the bike thing).
She was kind of right about the horse, I have to say. Otherwise, not so much.
Me too! I still don’t put my arm out the car window because my arm could get cut off if there was a car accident.
All my mom did was praise my butt to high heaven, guaranteeing that I would always wear tunics or ill-fitting, “cinched” pants. I didn’t buy a pair of form-fitting jeans until I was married, and then she was pissed that my husband convinced me to buy them, when she never could.
My favorite from my own personal life, when I got my first email account at 14: “Just don’t email any boys because they might think you’re interested in them and that’s kind of like dating and dating leads to divorce and abortions.”
This is a WONDERFUL spiral of consequences
Yes, it was also the reason why I was not permitted to date until I was married, and then I could date my husband. (Large Group Settings apparently work miracles on relationships.)
The ol’ Group Date! Because no one ever got into trouble in groups of six or more.
(cues up wocka-wocka orgy music)
Fortunately, my mom never tried this with me, because she knew FULL WELL the ways to get around the Group Date (as it’s how she and my dad actually dated, as well as how all of her sisters dated their boyfriends – they would all travel together to “visit” the one sister that was already married, and meet their dates there. So long as everyone met up on time, Abuelito and Abuelita never had to know.)
Whereas my mother seemed to think I was morally obligated to go on at least TWO dates (not one!) with any boy who made the effort of asking, even if I had spent enough time in Large Group Settings with them to know perfectly well that I was not having any of what he had for sale.
I mean, technically, she’s not wrong.
My mother works in an ER and tells me all of her work horror stories. As a result, I’m completely terrified of: ladders, lawnmowers, all power tools, charcoal and gas grills, tree stands, etc., etc.
(I am 35 and have never mowed a lawn).
I’m thinking that never mowing should be something to say with pride!
Yes! My mother and my aunt are both nurses and the weird accident (Or gangrene! Always the gangrene!) anecdotes at dinner are terrifyingly real.
I can trace my lawnmower phobia to a particular story of 90-year-old identical twin sisters (with rhyming first names), who simultaneously ran over each other’s toes with lawnmowers.
Please make this an epic poem. Please?
I’LL DO MY BEST! (clears throat)
*cracks knuckles theatrically over a manual Underwood typewriter*
My aunt Rose stepped on a garden hoe, which flipped up and broke her nose badly. I am an avid gardener, and have absorbed my mother’s religous chant of “Remember your great Aunt Rose and her broken nose” when ever anyone uses a hoe. I suppose there are other ways that rhyme could have gone, now that I see it all typed up like that.
Inevitably, every spring, one of my children looks at a rake or a hoe and says, “remember…” and the rest all finish the statement. I have done my job passing on the familial irrational fear.
My fears personally revolve around exploding gas furnace pilot lights, hands in snowblowers, fingers in electric hedge trimmers (all from mom), and the other one I passed down on my own was a particularly horrifying 4H incident when one of the high schoolers around here got her long hair stuck in the tractor PTO and was…scalped.
Also, when I was pregnant with my first a kid around here jumped onto his bed with a pencil on it and the pencil stabbed him in the heart and killed him. For years I panicked whenever my kids did homework on the bed.
Also some 2 year olds opened a bean bag chair and suffocated on the styrofoam, so my kids were never allowed to have bean bag chairs. They still mock me.
I’m so glad I’m not the only one who takes freak accidents way too much to heart. Facebook seems to algorithmically know I’m a mom and constantly feeds me just ridiculously terrible news stories about bizarre, bad things happening to kids. I’ve taken to reporting them as offensive.
I am very irritated that Rose did not manage to step on hoes, PLURAL, so that the rhyme would continue. Is this wrong?
Remember Great Aunt Rose and her broken nose, and always take care around rakes and hoes!
You.are.wonderful.
Roses supposes her toeses missed hoeses,
But Roses supposes Erroneously,
Roses she knowses her hoeses hits noseses,
Cause Roses put hoeses where toeses should be!
I jumped onto a bed with a pencil on it once but all I got was a wicked scar on my knee. (I was a legal adult when it happened though.)
That sounds like a scene from a John Waters movie or something.
The biggest thing I’ve learned from working at a work comp insurer is that stairs are the most dangerous thing at work, followed closely by sidewalks with infinitesmal amounts of ice. Seriously, SO MANY of our patients get hurt by these things. It’s made me practice walking and learn how not to rush.
Yes!! All those things, too!
When I was in law school, our classes were located next to a Frank Gehry monstrosity with all kinds of weird roof angles:
Every winter, there were lethal, man-sized icicles hanging off in all directions, and they had to rope off parts of the sidewalk so nobody would get killed. I kept thinking, “You built this IN CLEVELAND?? Next to AN ENTIRE BUILDING FILLED WITH LAWYERS?!”
(Also, a crazed gunman was loose in there once, and it took the police hours to catch him because the hallways and rooms are so weird)
And that’s how I learned Frank Gehry worships the Dark Lord Cthulthu.
It’s okay, now they’ve added those bushes so you can’t walk too close!
(I am 100% serious, not making things up based on the picture – i know because I went (actually still go) to that school too!)
Hi there! (I don’t live in Cleveland anymore, but I just made a trip back there recently to stock up on Hungarian garlic sausage).
STAIRS, MAN. Stairs have me as their favored enemy, I just know it. My earliest memory is of falling down two flights of stairs when I was about 4, and they’ve haunted me ever since.
They are legitimately very dangerous things! I use elevators with NO SHAME.
I fell backwards down a giant escalator in a European train station once. My thighs looked like I’d been mauled by a bear.
My mom had a weird vendetta against rollercoasters- I’ve only been on two in my life. Whenever ANY kind of accident happened, she would show us the article and be like LOOK WHAT HAPPENS ON ROLLERCOASTERS. DEATH. SCALPING. DON’T RIDE A ROLLERCOASTER.
Strangely enough I’ve met several other Jews who had the same lecture from their mother?
Were they also traumatized by a 1970s movie called “Rollercoaster”, where a guy blows up rollercoaster tracks for fun and the cars go flying off and everyone screams and dies?
…… uh, just asking, no reason.
noooo horror movies noooooo.
I watched Nightmare on Elm Street when I was five. I haven’t been the same since.
Nothing feeds insomnia anxiety better than, “close your eyes for thirty seconds and you will die!” Whatever you do, Don’t Fall Asleep. was actually a tagline, right?
SAME.
I was in middle school and ditto. Also I had a friend who lived on Elm Street with a family member named Fred.
(This is probably enough mention of the movie to guarantee I have nightmares all night now.)
My parents let me watch Poltergeist as a kid. I have no idea why, but the way I reacted (lots of nightmares) meant that my parents didn’t let me see anything even remotely frightening for, like, a decade. I was in sixth grade when Beetlejuice came out and I was the only kid in my class who didn’t get to see it. And it’s not even actually scary!
They had that at the drive in as a double feature when I was a kid, after something crazy like escape from witch mountain. I STILL sometimes have rollercoaster nightmares.
Oh, thank God!! I felt so alone (sobs)
Well I’m 36 and have never mowed a lawn because laziness.
That too… also, I roped my younger brother into doing it
I’m seriously allergic to grass pollen and mowing a lawn will lay me up for days.
It’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
this is basically my excuse as well, but my uncle has fairly serious asthma and still mows his lawn while wearing a surgical mask, so I’m pretty sure my parents are just humoring me.
46 and same.
I’m terrified of riding a bike with open shoes, because my mum told me that as a kid, she was riding a bike in thongs (flip flops, to you Americans!) and she got her foot caught in the chain and ripped her toenail off! Never ridden a bike in anything other than closed toe shoes to this day, and I plan on making my kid do the same.
And also, every time I read posts like this one, I’m terrified of inadvertently scarring my kid for life, maybe the fact that I worry so much about it will help me avoid it? Maybe? I don’t want her to be posting on a website (or whatever we have in 20 years) telling everyone how her mother ruined her for life, gah!
I ride my bike in my dress sandals sometimes, but I put toe clips on both bikes to keep my feet from sliding off the pedals. That they confer a mechanical benefit is a bonus.
When I talked about going to university: “Don’t take this the wrong way, but no one in our family has ever been a doctor or lawyer.”
I wasn’t talking about becoming a doctor or lawyer, nor did I become one, but I did get a Master’s degree – first in my family as far as I know.
After expressing surprise that I got into my first choice university: “Well, yes, I thought you were smart, but I didn’t think you were that smart.”
On the plus side, I’ve learned from my mother to 1. manage my expectations and 2. deliver searing backhanded compliments!
That’s like when I learned my class rank in high school and surprised my mom by how high it was even though I got straight A’s every quarter
My Partners and grandparents were constantly talking about what I were to do when I fail my exams while I was doing my Abitur, which is similar to the british A levels. They told me how I then had to ‘a real job’, maybe become an accountant. I’m currently in my third year of uni, and they are still assuming I’ll be dropping out.
Sorry, my tablet just autocorrects everything. *parents, *get ‘a real job’
That makes it sound like there’s a curse or something – ever since your great- great- etc. grandfather’s goat ate that old man’s trousers no member of your family will be able to get either of the two marjor post-graduate degrees. (The old man couldn’t think of any others in the heat of the moment.)
She meant we’re all dumb, but I like your take. It’s less insulting and better, more interesting.
“(The old man couldn’t think of any others in the heat of the moment.)”
(waves cane) You and your offspring shall NEVER obtain a PhD in post-postmodern literary criticism!
My mom is truly a delight. My dad, however, assured us that if we were bad, we’d wake up with the Devil standing at the foot of our bed. We were Catholic. The devil was very, very real to us.
I never knew where I got that persistent middle-of-the-night image of the devil rising up out of Hell, directly at the foot of my bed. I don’t remember anyone ever telling me this. Now I know. It must be fed to us along with the communion wafers.
My grandmother was the last one in the family to go to catholic school, she is now a lesbian who gets arrested protesting things and makes eggs for rich wiccans or something. I still had nightmares like this. Maybe it’s a genetic memory?
This is fascinating to me. My Catholic education made it very clear that we didn’t need to worry/think about Satan too much because human beings were perfectly capable of being evil all on their own.
I should clarify. Old school Catholic. I’m not that old, but the school/church I went to liked the old ways. I had nuns who’d spank, slap, hit or otherwise physically reprimand students until I was in the fifth grade. They wielded Satan like a damn katana, so my dad’s warning had extra bite. Which was interesting because he wasn’t Catholic.
Oh yes, there are pockets of that still hanging around sadly.
My mom has been, from childhood to this day, CONVINCED that creeps are peering in my windows at all times after dark, hatching nefarious schemes for me. I don’t have the heart to tell her that in Brooklyn, I’m the creep peering in other people’s windows, and I’m not plotting them harm, just rating their sexual activities.
That reminds me I’ve been meaning to re-watch Rear Window.
My mom: “Never take up jogging, you might get addicted to it.”
I was scrolling through and read this as “pegging.”
Same advice applies
Now that’s just solid advice.
When I was ~15 a teacher praised me as a genius and I very excitedly told my mom who responded “oh please, if you were a genius you’d’ve done something remarkable by now. You’re just above average”
ooof Moooommmmmmmmmm
My mom told me not to spend the weekend with my new boyfriend, because she said it made me look “needy and desperate.” Eleven years of marriage later, husband and I still joke about how needy and desperate I am.
My mom, when I came out to her the second or third time (it took many years for my comings-out to really stick): “well, we’ll just have to agree to disagree.”
The coming-out immediately after that one was met with “maybe you shouldn’t tell anyone, because if boys learn that you have been dating girls, they’ll think you are damaged goods,” which at least proved to me that my mother does not watch contemporary pornography.
WOW. I mean there’s a lot of responses to that but “I think you are wrong and you are not in fact queer” is not what I would expect. Like, anger, denial, but trying to argue you out of it is weird. Then again I’ve never had a coming-out experience and so I have no idea what my parents would say.
It’s actually pretty believable to me. My mom had some very “logical” reasons why I was mistaken for thinking I was queer, once she’d terrified me into submission.
My mom did that too. Maybe I shouldn’t have laid “I’m bi” and “I’m an atheist” on her in the same conversation; maybe I overloaded her coping circuits. She calmly denied it and changed the subject.
I dropped those two bombshells 10 years apart. Not that either “coming out” seems to have stuck in her mind. Just the other day, she was very patiently explaining to me how I’m a Christian. Because she says I am is I think the reason? The whole bisexual thing is just a phase I’ve been working through since…birth.
It sounds so ridiculous, doesn’t it? And yet, especially if you’re a particular flavor of queer… I love my mother dearly but I haven’t told her I’m bi because she doesn’t really believe it’s a thing (because her best friend, a gay man, says all bi people are really gay) and I’m just not prepared to deal with that one myself until I absolutely have to.
Dunno what motivates people to argue about these things, though. Seems like the person coming out would know about themselves, right?
Oh my I can relate to this so very much. My mother has conveniently forgotten all conversations about my queerness since I ended up in a long term relationship with a man. The one time she actually acknowledged it was to say, ‘Maybe I didn’t give my daughters good enough male role models.’ (My sister is also not-heterosexual).
I … quite like my dad and think he is a decent enough role model?? What does that even mean???
For what it’s worth, though, I’m still glad I told her, whatever the reaction. It helped. Hope all goes well whenever you do decide to have That Talk!
Apparently if you and your sister were both straight, that would mean you had the right male role models? Because that’s just how it works! You stick enough men in front of your daughters and they grow up prepared to marry them!
And thank you. 🙂 I expect if I ever do actually have That Talk with my mom, it’d be okay. It’d be easier if I just were gay – she’s not homophobic, she just doesn’t get being attracted to more than one gender – but at worst it’d probably just be a mildly unpleasant afternoon of pointing out that I think I’d know who I was attracted to, thanks. I just realllllly don’t want to discuss my romantic life with my family.
Oh no, I think this is my future 🙁
I worked up my courage for so long and finally came out to my mom recently… and she said “okay, sure honey” and now refuses to acknowledge that it even happened.
I am dealing with it by constantly mentioning my queerness in everyday conversation, just to see if she acknowledges it.
“What’d you do last weekend, sweetie?”
“Oh, you know. Slept in, watched a movie. Regular lesbian stuff.”
“That’s nice, hon. Are you coming for Easter?”
You’ll find out what she thinks when you take a girlfriend home. Maybe she’s in deep denial. On the other hand, maybe she’s perfectly fine and it literally makes no difference to her. I hope it goes well when it happens.
Thank you! Sadly, I’m pretty sure it’s not the second option. My folks are old school Catholics of the “birth control is a sin and homosexuality is intrinsically disordered” variety.
I think she thinks it’s just a phase, like when I was five and made everybody call me Sir I’mNotSorry because I was a Knight of the Round Table. Cause those are definitely comparable situations.
Oh, I’m sorry. That sounds like it’s going to be a hard adjustment. But I love your Round Table name!
My Mum was/is mostly supportive and loving, but definitely had some body image issues that she found it difficult to avoid pushing onto me. I really clearly remember my her telling me (not sure exactly what age – before I became focused on weight myself, so maybe about 9 or 10?) that I would never be fat, because she *made me a thin baby*. She never explained what that meant, but I now surmise it had something to do with dieting during pregnancy, which is a little alarming (especially since she also once told me that as a teenager she once decided she wasn’t going to eat anything – nothing at all – for an entire week. And managed it.). Anyway, Mum, I trust we can both agree that my double Ds and childbearing hips have laid your ‘thin baby’ theory to waste.
Despite my being with my wife for nine years, my mom still reminds us that we can still break up and go get ourselves some husbands. Because we’re together because it hasn’t occurred to either of us to just marry men. Like, we’re going to wake up one day, look at each other, and be like “you know, mom was right all along. We really should just be with dudes.”
I feel like this is a surprisingly common response! Mine took approximately fifteen years to come around, and eventually only sucked it up because a Catholic dude implied interest to her.
Bless. It’s like the worst sort of intersectionality, really.
The two big things that stick in my mind are when my mom told me that if I wore a necklace to bed, then it would strangle me in my sleep (I was convinced that the chain would somehow shrink when it realized I was asleep?), and her response any time I relayed a compliment I received: “Well, what else are they going to say?” She was convinced that no one would tell me bad things (aka “the truth”) to my face, so all compliments were a lie.
Clearly, this was pre-internet. I still get twitchy around necklaces when I’m getting ready for bed, though.
but what if it gets tangled on itself somehow and DOES STRANGLE YOU. is this not a rational fear?? does this have to go onto my list of things I think will kill me that are harmless? my mom absolutely told me sleeping with a necklace would strangle me.
See, I realize that NOW, but at the time… Also, I frequently have hair down to the middle of my back or longer, and I’m honestly more concerned about it strangling me or my husband than anything else.
I’ve worn necklaces 24/7 for weeks or even months at a time, and have not been strangled in my sleep even once! If that is a useful data point for you.
Wait. Is this necklace thing not true? Can’t it twist around your neck somehow? My mom told me this also, and I must believe it because at bedtime in my house, I merely have to act like I’m about to speak and my 9 year old says “I know, I know, take the necklace off.”
Speaking as a mom, I’m pretty sure my toddler is going to strangle herself with Mardi Gras beads.
(I sneak in and take them from her after she falls asleep. There is no takign them before she falls asleep.)
Same with my five-year-old. Although, she has moved on recently from the mardi gras beads to her swimming goggles. I don’t know how she can even GO to sleep with those things on, but I keep having to go in and take them off of her each night.
My mother told us that if we wore wet bathing suits – you know, didn’t change into dry clothes after swimming right away- we’d get pimples on our butts. To this day I’m not 100% convinced she’s wrong.
IDK about pimples but you 100% can get a yeast infection from wet bathing suits. Chlorine is really really bad for the good bacteria that keep it balanced
Oh we never swam in pools, just lakes.
The funniest was when, after not seeing each other in RL for a couple years, the first thing she said was “You got fat.” Like she opened her hotel room door and said that instead of hi.
She doesn’t get pictures of me.
I try to cope with this nonsense by picturing people who say this as the type of very old-school Chinese granny who would be throwing up her hands in delight. “You got fat! Good job!”
!!!!
I suspect it’s not actually funny, but black humor gets me through. Besides, it’s hard to be funny about when she threatened to kick me out of the house at 14 because I came out as gay. 😛
you…have been through some things. Wow.
whenever i go home, my mom observes “hmm you’ve gotten fatter” and then demands “do you not like my cooking anymore?????” when i don’t eat a lot at dinner time. i feel like it’s a probably cultural thing so i’m okay with it but she also never uses the endearing chinese word for fat so idk
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
One time I visited my mother and when I walked into the house the very first thing she said was “See?” to a complete stranger who said “You’re right, [ostensibly complimentary remark about my figure]”.
Thanks Mum, I love being introduced to people with an immediate assessment of my body!
Uh, that sucks! My mother nagged on me to lose weight, then when I did come home after losing a lot of weight didn’t notice, when forced to notice grumbled that I looked nice, then loudly announced that weight doesn’t matter.
(Despite the large collection of stories I have about her, she’s a good mother. Just imperfect like everyone else.)
At my intake for an eating disorder program: “I don’t want her to do this because I don’t want her to lose her perfectionism”
A few months after leaving said program, when I was freaking about gaining weight: “You could lose X pounds no problem!”
When I got my period “Don’t tell your father. Or anyone. Ever”
Referring to my anti-depressants: “When are you going to get off that garbage?”
“You don’t want to get fat like your sisters. Or your father. Or your aunts.”
INTERNET HUG
Oh ffffff I think our mothers are clones. Mine still harangues me about my antidepressants, and used to tell me how to get her idealized figure via exercise and diets when I was extremely underweight.
I am so sorry.
I’d like to think her mindset/worldview/etc. comes from never being able to love herself, and to being taught to only value herself as a mother and a wife, not as a woman with value independent of her relationship to others. My mother is a strong but unhappy person. It can be a terrible combination. Perhaps that is true for your mother as well.
I’m sorry. My mother says mean things about my siblings’ weight to me. I think she is ashamed of them. It’s terrible that her acceptance of us is affected by our weight 🙁
Oh my GOD! That’s horrific!
Yeah my mum is very anti medication for depression, and at 16 told me no one would ever love me the way I was, and encouraged super disordered eating.
That is seriously my fear about periods though and it did not come from my mom…
I bleed on my couch every single month. I am 34 and don’t have particularly heavy periods. I’m just that inept/unlucky.
Mine came from my grandmother. I was living with her while my mother finished college in one state and my father was working in another, so she decided to tell me stories about when she lived with her grandmother as a child. Including the one about when she woke up with her first period one morning. She was a medical librarian, her husband was a doctor, her mother was a nurse. Leaving out details to spare children was for the weak.
Somehow, her retelling it turned into “getting your period means you wake up one random morning in a giant pool of blood where your bed used to be” in my nine year old mind. For ages I was terrified that it might happen to me on any given morning. I lived in abject terror of the eventual day I too would awake to find myself drowning in blood with my favorite pjs and stuffed animals ruined.
Thanks a lot, Gran.
Mine came indirectly from my mom. It took three periods before she thought to explain to me that pads came in different sizes. The first three periods were. . . messy.
So we’re gonna talk about moms, huh? *opens the filing cabinet*
My mom used to make fun of my sister and I like it was her job. We joke that she is more of a locker room bully than a maternal figure. I have a good relationship with my mom now, but my sister and I like to recite the things she told us as preteens to make her squirm.
“You look like an orphan!” “All I can say for you is, thank god for makeup.”
ETA: oh my GOD how could I possibly forget when I tried to use my first tampon and cried out of shame/discomfort and she leaned over me and just said, “This is what sex feels like. You better get used to it.”
My mom used to say I looked like an orphan, too!
My mom used the delightfully archaic “ragamuffin.”
“”This is what sex feels like. You better get used to it.””
My older sister said that to me! Oh wow. I’d forgotten about that! “It’ll help you get used to what sex feels like.” Sex feels nothing like a small cardboard applicator, sis, wtf.
OMG BRB giving my mother a gold medal…..
For. Real.
Every now and again something like this comes along and I realise how great my mum is in all the ways that matter.
Me too. My Mom has her faults, too, but she’s still the best and my favourite human and I should really call her more often.
Seriously. My mother had (and has) her flaws and her hangups, just like every other human. But she NEVER forgot that her children were actual people, not passive receptacles for those very same flaws and hangups. Which is pretty impressive, apparently?
Her birthday is tomorrow. She turns 59. I’m setting the alarm to call her at this very moment. (I love my mother but am bad at birthdays, don’t judge me)
My mom just told me she found my ex’s fiancee on Facebook and wanted to let me know that “she’s fat, but not as fat as you”. Bless you, mama.
“Oh, you look nice!”
“Thanks Mum”
“Maybe if you wore makeup more often, men would notice you?”
Yeah, really…
Oh man, these are great. Moms are just impossibly good at this shit. I only shop for clothes online now, after decades of shopping with her “that’s too tight, let me find you a couple sizes bigger” for clothes that fit perfectly. No, Mom, I’m just fat. Ooh, and the time as a teenager when we went out to run an errand, and I went without makeup or doing my hair, so she insisted that was the only day I could possibly get my passport photo taken. When I got home she admitted it was to show me that you should never leave the house without makeup (she claims she never has). The consequences of that one are on my worst-ever passport picture for two more years (so close!).
“of course men are going to try to touch you, that’s what you get for acting so mature.”
i was twelve!!!
Heartbreaking, truly. All the consensual happy hugs for you my sweet!
Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh (continued on page 45)
it’s okay, happy ending! i don’t talk to her anymore.
Teenage me: “Mom, I wanted to ask if it’d be ok if I went on a date?”
My mother, pityingly: “Oh, hon, nobody would WANT to date you!”
She was a gem, my mother.
Damn, my mom said the same thing! She was ultimately trying to drive the point home that I wouldn’t clean my room, so gross, who would want to date someone that sloppy? She somehow didn’t realize that I might possibly be hurt by it for forever.
Oh no! Solidarity and support for you, fellow Toastee!
(I’m pretty sure my own mother was talking about the dreaded FAT, but she was very thorough about her emotional abuse, so hard to say for sure.)
Same to you! 💕
After showing my mother the illustration of my partner and me I drew for our wedding invitation: “Hmm, do you think you could make it look a bit more like you?”.
Devastated. I do a lot of illustrations in my job as a designer.
(I ended up using the drawing anyway after showing it to a professional illustrator friend who said it was fine).
“YOU WERE A VERY DIFFICULT BABY.”[GLARE.]
This is also me.
It’s so scary how much that can influence parent/child relations. Terrifies me. Your being a difficult baby wasn’t your fault. Your mother should have had a better support system so she didn’t feel the need to glare at you about something totally natural.
My mom is a doctor, so I actually believed all the stupid stuff she used to tell me. My personal favorite was “If you leave all that Barbie hair on the floor, it’s going to get stuck in your feet”.
I believed that until I was a teenager and she let it slip that she just didn’t want me giving my Barbies mohawks.
Now that my sisters and I are all adults, she regularly mentions how glad she is that she can finally make fun of us (with love, of course). Today it was “your roommate must be a gem for dealing with you. That was a compliment by the way”.
I try so hard to not say things to my daughter that will scar her. I do, however, make faces like the mother in the comic a LOT while scolding her. It’s like a mirror.
“Go through puberty fat and you’ll be fat forever” (I was 11)
“You are choosing to be gay and everyone you love will leave you. You’ll end up alone” (I had to come out to her roughly once a month for ten years before it stuck) She also thought I must have been sexually assaulted because that apparently makes you gay. But didn’t wonder why if that were the case, I would not have told her.
“I hate spending time with my sister, it’s like looking at an ugly distortion of my own face.”
She went into full mourning when I didn’t get into Oxford. And still gets overexcited when I get locked out of the house “because now you know what it’s like to be abandoned”
Tragically, she was very badly bullied at boarding school and has never shut up about it, but also never examined the effect on her own behaviour. And yes, I have gently suggested therapy.
At least she provides excellent literary material.
I had to make an account to comment specifically because that first cartoon happened to me unprompted; the first and only time I ever dated a guy I was a terrified 16 year-old gay and he was 21, which was messed up for various reasons but none more-so than the massive experience gap between us; I was very prim and the idea of kissing in public mortified me, he was very forward (in retrospect, potentially he was quite normal?)
Anyway this culminated in us sitting on a park bench in central Cambridge and him trying to kiss me, whereupon what I have from that point onward called “the simple blocking hand” appeared between his face and mine. I don’t remember putting it there, I don’t remember thinking about it, but there it was, preventing any kind of physical contact firmly and rigidly. I have not kissed a guy since.
At my wedding, LITERALLY MOMENTS before walking down the aisle.
“You look really beautiful, honey.”
“Aw, thanks mom!”
“Except for your bottom teeth. You never wore your retainer, they’re all so crooked now.”
“You look like someone cinched a full sack of potatoes” upon seeing me in a dress with a belt, on my way to my first middle school dance.
“Oh dear, no one wants to see your knees. Your knees are…. well, why don’t you try a calf length skirt?”
I have a definite knee complex to this day. She is not terribly modest, just… really hates my knees I guess?
To my sister, when she asked if they left the lights on at the track so she could go running in the evening: “Oh honey I don’t think you need to worry about that, you’re just not that pretty anymore.”
Upon being informed I was expecting a child: “Oh. Well where are you going to put it?” followed by “I assume grad school is off again then?” It wasn’t.
In her defense, I think she was sort of horribly trying to protect us? By telling us all the most horrible things it was possible to think about ourselves, and encouraging us to grow chitinous scar tissue over those soft spots? Thanks mom!
Mom was fine. Mom brainwashed me into thinking I have no control or ownership over my body and made sure my rapist’s work was done for him, but dad was really the one with the good one-liners.
* Threatening to beat me if I brought a girlfriend or an asshole boyfriend home. When I was five. Luckily for me, I’m not attracted to women, so the message I took from that was that a girl, any girl, is just as bad as a boy who’s an asshole. And I was in school by then, so I knew the world was reading me as a girl.
* Threatening to have me put in a mental institution if I didn’t lose weight. The Insane Troll Logic behind this was that since so much of my weight gain was due to antidepressant and antipsychotic side effects, obviously that meant my weight was a psychiatric issue, and if my current doctors couldn’t fix it I obviously needed to be shut away in a padded cell somewhere.
* Telling me I was abusing him when I got a little cranky after waiting in the snow for him to pick me up from school.
* On seeing me go into my room, shut the door, and stand behind a curtain so he wouldn’t see me crying, following me inside and bellowing, “What do you think you’re going to accomplish by crying?”
* A couple of days after I came out as genderqueer, ambushing me after I came home from work one morning to say, “I was thinking, why not have an MRI if you’re confused about what organs you have?”
Those are the really good, cinematic, Toast-comment-friendly ones, anyway.
Oh my god. I want to punch your dad in the face. Then have a discussion with your mom about the importance of assertiveness, consent and boundaries. Then PUNCH your dad in the GODDAMN FACE, possibly assisted by your newly enlightened mom? (It’s MY daydream, OK, throw me a bone.)
For fuck’s sake, parents. Do better. Just… goddamn it.
Mom has improved in the intervening years, though I still don’t get to say no to things like unwanted hugs (if I try to resist, it gets treated like a joke). Sometime in her fifties she discovered what a boundary is and that she and I both get to have them. She also says her biggest regret is having to basically let Dad raise me and that if she won some kind of huge lottery prize, it’d be divided evenly between charity and getting bloody revenge on the people who have hurt me over the years. But mostly I just deal by not talking to them except every few weeks when I go to visit (can’t avoid them too long, living in the same building).
That is completely horrible. I’m wishing you a sweet giant leopard who will cuddle you and purr and give your rides on his back, but also viciously attack anyone who threatens you.
OMG LEOPARD. 😀
“You’re so lucky you didn’t get my bird bones.”
My mother was fairly awful and abusive. But even when she wasn’t in full-on rage mode, she had a way of subtly messing with me.
“Every time I see your hair, I just want to run a brush through it” – I have curly hair.
“Why should I go to your play/choir concert/whatever? You’re always in a play/choir/whatever. It’s not special.”
Now that i’m an adult, she’s much better. But she still has her favorite: “I’d say I’m proud of you, but it’s not like I have anything to do with what you’ve done.”
But that’s a straight-up compliment, isn’t it? As in: what you’ve accomplished is all you, and no one else can take any credit for it?
Having curly hair in a straight hair family is the WORST. I have had so many terrible haircuts and terrible hairbrushing experiences that I will not let anyone else cut my hair- I still burst into tears afterwards and I’m nearly 30.
-*after I bought a brand new pair of very expensive handmade eyeglasses* “Let me see your new glasses! Oh… I hate them! Why would you buy these?!”
-*after I cut my hair*- “Let me see your new- Oh… you got bangs. It’s going to take me a while to get used to those…”
-*me asking for a piece of birthday cake* “Do you want a piece of cake or do you want a boyfriend?”
– Also notable: wants me to dress nicely, wear make up, work out, eat well. Constantly berates me for: spending money on skin care/makeup/shoes/clothing, my gym, organic groceries, etc.
– When I mentioned in college I thought I was depressed: “But… what could you possibly be depressed about?!”.
– Asks me every week (on the day she knows I have therapy) “Are you still going to that lady? You know they just want your money, they’ll never tell you it’s time to stop.”
-“Oh, your brother is just so wonderful. He never gave us any of the problems you did.”
Oh my word I love my mom so much and she hasn’t said any of these to me, but she is convinced the economy will crash, there will be an EMP or bioterrorism attack, and a massive food shortage will happen in America before November and these are all legitimate reasons for me to consider moving back in with her and Dad even though I’ve been on my own for six years. But seriously, Mom, if any of these happen, living with you and Dad won’t actually make any of our lives better, will it? I mean, you’ve seen how much I eat – even the apocalypse won’t change that.
To adolescent me, regarding cleaning: “I will never want to come visit you, because your house will be disgusting and I won’t be comfortable.”
To 18 year old me, between HS graduation and leaving for college, who had started to gain weight now that I had a desk job: “What, you think that now that you have a boyfriend you can just let yourself go?” I had never for an instant worried about my weight before that.
To 30-something me, after I was teasing my 12 years younger than me sister about how my room would never have been allowed to be as messy as hers: “Well, her room doesn’t stink.”
Ten years into my chosen career: “I really wish you had an actual profession, I’m just so worried about your job.” WTF?
While mine isn’t nearly as bad as some of these, my personal favorite was when my then-husband and I meet up with my parents when they came out west skiing. As the man was going to get the car, both of my parents lovingly brought up my weight (I was a size 14. One whole size bigger than I was when I got married).
“Don’t you want your husband to be proud to have you on his arm?”
…Really?
This is like therapy up in here!
It’s like I have found my people. Some of my mom’s highlights:
“You always were a horrible sister.”
(When I was desperate in my post-partum depression and called her) “Well you’d better not tell anyone about this, especially your doctor! They’ll tell the police and they’ll take your child away from you and she’ll be all alone and crying for you while she gets beaten in a foster home.” (It took me weeks to get over that.)
“Dad and I paid for your college education!…. Wow that was a waste of good money.” (I’m the only one in my family with a white-collar job.)
(When I called to tell her my husband had been arrested) “You were always such a liar.”
“I wish you wouldn’t use the word ‘abuse.’ He only hit you and the kids *sometimes.*”
There’s a reason we don’t talk today.
Worrying about my career because of a chronic illness: ‘You’ve only really failed if you don’t have children’.
When awaiting grad school results: “Some woman from Columbia called. She was VERY insistent on talking to you. I told her you had already decided on going somewhere else, but she kept arguing with me. Anyway, I wrote down her number.” (No congratulations in there at any point!)
In 7th grade, first year in junior high, “Do you mind if I don’t go to the parent-teacher conference tonight? They always say the same thing, you’re doing fine.”
In college, still recovering from clinical depression: “I don’t know what you’re sad about. You’re smart, you’re thin.”
It sounds like your mom was super jealous of you 🙁
That sucks, I’m sorry!
I was a horrifically clumsy child. I did things like bite clean through my tongue whilst doing a somersault, and accidentally hang myself from a tree by the hair while climbing the rope swing. My mother is pretty neurotic, but after the fifth or sixth bleeding head wound she stopped being impressed.
When I was 14 or so, my bedroom was undergoing construction and had a hollow-core door laying on its side on the floor. I tripped on/in it and tore a toe half-off. I hobbled to my mother's bedroom, where she looked up from the book she was reading, took in the unsurprisingly sight of me once again covered in gore, said, "Stop bleeding on my carpet," and went back to her book.
I fell backwards down a giant escalator in a European train station once. My thighs looked like I'd been mauled by a bear.
I was in middle school and ditto. Also I had a friend who lived on Elm Street with a family member named Fred.
(This is probably enough mention of the movie to guarantee I have nightmares all night now.)
I ride my bike in my dress sandals sometimes, but I put toe clips on both bikes to keep my feet from sliding off the pedals. That they confer a mechanical benefit is a bonus.