Things That Piss You Off

I have a couple of friends that are my age but have never been married or had kids. They always come up with these great ideas for trips to take like riding the apalachian trail or going mushroom hunting in the Great Lakes region. It wouldn’t be a thing if they weren’t like “Oh come on! We’ll leave on blahblahblah and be back on yada-yada…”.

And I’m like “There are way too many moving parts for me to just jump in the car and check out for a week. It just doesn’t work like that…”

I don’t rain on their parade though. They’re having a good time. It’s frustrating though.

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I have a bunch of kids and while I try to be a superdad and spend as much time with them as possible, I never ever mention them to other people - coworkers, acquaintances, even friends unless they ask about them specifically.

I think this is the reason I’ve managed to keep my child free friends. Some people don’t want kids, other cannot have them, so it would be presumptuous to constantly push my life choices into the forefront when dealing with them.

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My wife and I have two couple friends that are this way. Aside from an obligatory, “how are the kids?”, it’s just not something we are interested in talking about.

Nothing is worse than hearing about Sadie’s double ear infection. Not to be rude, but it’s just of no interest to me.

Is it any worse than hearing about their own bronchitis? People are just generally inane :stuck_out_tongue:

I have had 8 daughters. With the exception of this very forum, I don’t think I’ve ever talked about them in public, let alone work.

No one cares, and I am not so conceited as to think they should.

Also, I can’t stand babies, even my own. I loved them, mind you. But could barely wait until they could have an intelligent conversation (let alone change their diapers – I did enough of that as a single dad).

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I find that when people discuss their family, spouse, children, etc., it’s always in cliches. I could watch a sitcom and be 100% up to date on their life. If that’s the depth level of relationship people want, then I have no interest.

I do not have kids, but can completely agree. I flew to see my new nephew a few months ago. I held him for - maybe - 5 minutes before returning him to his mother.

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I’m glad I’m not the only one.

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At my age, most of my friends are empty nesters, like me. and we make plans, then cancel them on a regular basis. sometimes it’s just easier to go to bed early on a saturday, then to have a bunch of over 50’s over talking about thier medical issues and travel plans.

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As am I. Cnt fkin stnd dis lzy shit.

It’s become ubiquitous to the point I didn’t have to think about that gibberish you typed.

it was actually way harder to type than I thought it would be

prolly wuz

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The wife. She sucks with time and punctuality. So this morning in her flurry to get out the door and actually catch a street car she does her usual frantic running late thing. She gets to a parking lot which is and has been full, because its always full by 6:30 am, then proceeds to drive off and park her car in a neighborhood somewhere. As it happens, the only neighborhood in a many mile radius that actually has real crack houses and bona-fide crack heads. Then off she goes to do her thing in the big city.

Then she calls me a few hours later to tell me that is has been bothering her and she’s worried about the car, so could I go and retrieve it?

The part that really pisses me off though- We actually live only a couple hundred yards from a street car stop. There is no need to even drive. It actually takes as much time to drive to it as it does to walk, but even if you wanted to skip the few hundred footsteps- It has a giant parking lot and no crack heads. Its like the most convenient thing in the world if you don’t want to drive into the city.

The entirety of the situation just makes my head want to explode.

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Ugg. That would cause a divorce in my house.

I do have a wife story, involving bees and a general stiff neck about things she admits to not understanding. It generally goes like this:

Wife: "I don’t understand how X works. Will you fix X?

Me: “Sure.” Proceed to fix X

Wife: “Don’t fix X that way! It needs to go this way! Why are you doing that!? I heard on Oprah that X needs to be done this way!”

Me: “If you know better how to do it, here is the tool.”

Wife: “No! I don’t know how to do it.”

Me: Proceed to fix X, just as I planned, except extra aggravated.

Wife: “I solemnly swear I won’t butt in again about stuff I admittedly know nothing about, until the next time I butt in again.”

Oh, the bees:

This just happened, except I was standing on a porch surrounded by a swarm of bees, fixing X. She is inside the house.

I yell, “close the window, there’s bee!”

Wife: “Why should I close the window? How can you reach X? You need to be able to reach X!”

Me (yelling): “Close the fucking window, there’s bee!”

Wife: “There’s no need to yell at me!”

Me (getting stung) “Close the fucking window, I am in a swarm of bee!”

Wife: “There are bees? Where?”

Me (getting stung more): “Fucking God, woman, close the fucking window!”

Wife: Closes the window.

Me: Fix X. Come inside.

Wife “We need to talk. There is no need to yell at me.”

Me (calmly considering methods of murder I learned on the ID channel): “Where is the after sting care?”

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Oy. This. Look, I’m not yelling at you. My tone changed to a more stern, serious tone that for whatever reason you think is yelling. it is not yelling. We established what yelling is the first year of dating. Remember that time I yelled and you cried? I have not yelled in years. I use a stern voice. There’s a difference. A well established difference. I don’t think this situation would improve if I decided to explore the difference between my stern voice and my yelling voice…

Yea, I’ve had this conversation. It’s one of my more rehearsed monologues

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I get this, EXCEPT, it’s not Oprah… it’s her dad. “My dad says we need to do this!”

“Has your dad even seen what we are doing?”

“…no, he said that’s where we should start though.”

Ffs, she acts like I don’t work in Construction and have any idea how to do things.

Recently, I’ve been saying, when she disagrees, “well, your dad suggested we do this…”

“Don’t bring my dad into this!”

Lmao

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Loving this thread!

People who want to give advice on anything and start every sentence with: “The best thing to do is to…”

I have a colleague at work who would barge-in/interrupt any conversation to give his 2 cents on everything.

It’s mostly with good intentions, but cmon. Everyone is individual and has their own circumstances. What works for you is not necessarily the best for me and who are you to assume that you have universally found the best solution for everyone and everything in the entire world…

“What I found useful…” “What worked for me…” goes a long way…

Traffic especially when you’re going to the airport.

We’ve done that dance a few times. Thankfully she now just leaves me alone to do what ever needs done. I did the “Here’s the tools!” once and actually just walked away. Half way through a disassembled brake job.

I dodged that bullet by virtue of the fact that her dad is such a massive tool that she would never use him as reference for anything. He used to make her tear down his shop machinery (lathes, vertical mill, etc.) and rebuild it so that “she knows something when she grows up”.

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My better half is an educational psych. So kids.

Nearly everyone we talk to will make some comment about how she must have all these tricks to handle our child.

And she laps it up like nobody’s business.

She is a great mother but the reality is the kid is a fucking maniac with her and every second week she asks for us to pay for some charlatan to come in and help lol

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