Toxic family stories

In elementary school, I was sent to the principals office for beating the hell out of another kid. I can’t remember what exactly I did but I don’t imagine elementary school me was the most threatening creature.

Mom comes into the principles office absolutely livid. Back then it was a sort of walk of shame for a parent to come in when their child misbehaved in school. Karen’s were batting around teachers and principals like a cat playing with a mouse. It was different then.

Mom asked why I hit the other kid and I told her “he called (my sister) a whore.” I had no idea what that meant. Me and my sister had no concept of whores but I knew that was an insult and I was supposed to protect my little sister.

-Karen theme starts playing-

Mom, suddenly scary calm, sent me back to class. Not the principal, mom.

Mom had multiple stillbirths before they could have me and my sister. She has lots of Catholic school anger in her to this day. She served in the military and never once took anyone’s shit for not having a penis. The principal got literal military grade psycho the second I left that room.

I can only assume this ended in early retirement and a padded room after I left that man alone in a room with a Eldrich horror whose daughter was just called a whore.

To start this story to need to understand my nephew the severely autistic. He needs help and patience. He is not going to do what he is told simply because he was told to do something. There are certain things kids can do that he can’t. Like walking to school. He can walk. But he can’t understand that an oncoming car doesn’t give a shit about his routine and will kill him, among other concerns.

My sister lives a few blocks from the school but can’t walk him to school every day. The school does have bussing but decided that nearby houses don’t get bussing, the kids have to walk. There is an exception for disabled children.

The school decided since he can walk he’s not disabled and he has to walk to school even if it means he’s alone. They are aware he’s in the special classes. The teachers there have also been screaming at the administration not to let this kid walk to school. The school doesn’t listen.

My sister pointed out disabled bussing is not exclusive to physical disabilities. But she’s just a stressed out and exhausted mom. What’s she going to do to them? They tell her to fuck off. Diplomacy failed.

Enter grandma Karen.

My sister told our mother about this. My mother is a weapon we are very reluctant to deploy. She’s dramatic. She’s a narcissist. She needs a villain for every encounter or else she gets bored. She’s a problem. Unleashing her on any situation is the equivalent of swatting a fly with a missile. You’ll kill the fly but the entire area becomes a smoldering crater.

She’s also made some incredibly powerful friends in politics over the years in her career. I’m reasonably certain she knows where literal bodies are buried. She’s now old. And bored. And still very well connected. So mom did some investigating and came up with something.

My mother and sister scheduled another meeting with the school. They came in, same guy ready to dismiss the annoying women who dare tell him he’s wrong. Mom stays quiet while the guy makes his case. At a certain point she decides she has enough to hang him and she unleashes elderly Karen hell on this man. The primordial personality disorder that defines that half of my family has been awakened and it’s HUNGRY!

She goes after how he could put a child in danger, how he pick a fight with her grandson, all the emotional stuff she knows won’t work. She’s drawing him out.

Then he activates her trap card. “Mam, we just don’t have the budget for bussing every child.”

Got him. “But you do have the budget for bussing disabled children. What happened to that money?”

“Your grandson isn’t disabled. He can walk.”

“That’s not what the money was for it’s not for “can’t walk” it’s for “disabled.””

“I understand you care about your grandson, we all do, but that not how the budget works on this.”

“Actually, it is. Your school got a grant specifically for paying for this exact situation. (Name drop) was involved with writing that grant and I think we should hear his opinion on how that grant money should be spent.”

Mom then calls in one of the people who actually was behind that fucking grant as well as a union rep for the bus drivers or something was did some digging and found the school had that money and was desperately trying NOT to spend it, which they are very much not allowed to do. The two men now enter the room. My sister says nothing. My mom says nothing. He ignored the women, so now they will let the men speak.

My nephew now gets to ride the bus.

Not a lot to report on this one, but there are a few little things and one I kind of need people’s opinion on.

Mom got my niece a Barbie doll, which my niece thoroughly enjoyed but we noticed that it came with an insulin pump and turns out it’s one of those diabetic Barbies. We all thought that was cool. My niece loved it. Barbie now has a story and something that’s a little different from every other Barbie. My mother did not understand or appreciate that. My mother apologized profusely for giving the gift of a diabetic Barbie as if we now have to buy it insulin or something. I just do not understand this woman.

She had this crazy look on her face today the entire day too. She looked like Judy from avatar the last Airbender. Kind of like this weird Joker gas smile on her face all day, and her eyes were super creepy. She could follow a brief conversations she was having a decent day but something is definitely off. I’ve seen her get that creepy look in the past when she gets really pissed off and is trying to mask and failing, but it never lasts long. It eventually fades and she just goes back to normal bitch face. This time, she kept that expression in the entire day. Maybe she really does have Alzheimer’s, but I’m not about to let myself empathize with a narcissist. I’ve fallen for that too many times before it’s way too dangerous.

In other news, apparently my aunt had a facelift and also has the same Judy face now.

Mommy dearest is finally waking up to the fact that everyone being mad at her might mean SHE is the problem. But there’s an out! One of her brothers was recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. So she’s been letting the mask slip around her family and they are telling her they are concerned. But she won’t get checked because “it can’t do any good to know so why bother” she says. She also cancelled her retirement to keep working longer out of pettiness towards a rival at work. But yea, it must be Alzheimer’s.

My aunt called my sister today concerned about mom. She asked if we’ve noticed mom just making up outlandish shit lately. My sister was already overwhelmed heading to a funeral when she got the call so she lashed out and said something along the lines of her calling my sister when she banned my siblings from family Easter because they have children and she has white carpet.

My aunt asked what she was talking about. She said she tried to get them to come but told our mother she was worried she wouldn’t be able to have an Easter egg hunt for the kids because the backyard is a mess. She wanted them there. “I have dogs that do much worse to the carpet than you kids can.”

My sister had a separate Thanksgiving this year because we were all feeling mom was not only a problem but had poisoned them against us as just bad children. We felt unwanted and were backing away. Because mom kept saying they were “her” family, not our family. We are basically guests as far as mom is concerned.

My aunt was horrified. “She’s worse than we thought!” My sister corrected her “no, she isn’t. She knows her brother got an Alzheimer’s diagnoses and everyone is worried about him so she’s trying to steal his thunder. She’s ALWAYS been like this but tells everyone else that her kids are horrible little liars when they cried out for help when we were little.”

“What do you mean?”

And my sister just dumped everything. The time mom had her arrested at prom. The time she told cops I beat her and had me thrown in jail. (I didn’t. She made the entire fucking thing up). The checks from children’s services where we were coached to lie because if we told the truth we would never see eachother again. Just everything.

My aunt had no idea. She was horrified.

All this time we thought they knew and were just okay with it. And it was just mom lying AGAIN.

My sister had to go then. They had arrived at the funeral for her murdered friend (the one mom said must have deserved it).

And that’s the realization I now have for the holidays. The abuse we rationalized as children was so much worse than we realized because our mother isolated us when she couldn’t control the narrative.

Bonus: My mother said if the grandkids are at her house, she is their parent, not my siblings, because they came from her eggs (WTF). My sister basically told her she won’t see them inside her home if that’s how she wants to behave. I’d have told her to dig up grandma and get a second opinion but my sisters play was more diplomatic.

The narcissist is coming to Christmas at my sisters and I don’t know what to do. She going to pretend everything is fine. She is going to push buttons. And she is going to piss us off as much as possibly just hoping for a fight where she can play victim again.

And I’m done with this sideshow so I’m considering making her the spectacle this time. All I have to do is set some sort of reasonable boundary and calmly call her out when she crosses it. If I can plan this out ahead of time, it might just make the outcome more manageable.

My sister reminded me of this one today. When my nephew was only one year old, my mother told my sister he was too fat and that she should put him on a diet. Like they were feeding the kid Mountain Dew or something.

This one’s about dad!

Dad has us out in the driveway one night with a cheap little barbecue on a wagon, roasting marshmallows and looking at the neighboring farm field as if it had something to say. Nice calm evening.

But it’s not because dad has sagely wisdom to offer. He is drunk and had visitation. This is dark and quiet so that’s what we are doing right now.

Afterward, dad puts the lid on the barbecue to smother it and wheel the thing into the garage. Obnoxious little cub scout me remembers what I was taught in school, that we should put the thing out with water when we are done.

Dad: “no, it’ll be harder to light later.”

Me: “it’ll dry out by then. Just get the hose.”

Dad: “no. Wheel this into garage.”

Ooooookay.

The next day, dad and grandma are watching football and the house seems strangely foggy.

Me: “dad, something’s wrong. Is this smoke?”

Dad: “it’s just fog. It’s fine.”

Me: -twists fog around finger- “do this. Have you ever been able to do that with fog?”

Dad: “it’s fine.”

So I go downstairs and see the light of flames reflecting off the insulation on the walls. Fuck. Someone put a cardboard box on the wagon with the barbaque and it fell into it and knocked off the lid. I know I can’t open the garage and give it air but child me doesn’t know what I should be doing.

Me: “dad, there’s a fire!”

Dad: “no, there’s do fire.”

Me: -dropping the boy scout act- “LOOK IN THE DAMN GARAGE!”

Grandma: -wide eyes-

This is tactical. Teenage me swearing is nothing that gets dad’s attention. Getting his mother’s attention, however, means I just complained to management.

Dad reluctantly goes downstairs, sees his child was RIGHT about the fire under him, he drags is it out to the driveway to deal with, runs around like crazy looking for something to put it out while the house airs out. (No fog outside by the way)

The neighbor babysitter runs over because opening the garage let out a shitton of smoke and she freaked the fuck out. She’s also dressed for a Halloween party as a slutty cat so now I get to watch my father perving on the babysitter.

Sunday evening comes around and mom picks us up. I’m still bitter about being ignored by my father so guess what I told bitter mom right away?

Let them fight.

I went over to upgrade the family computer since windows 10 is being killed. (They can’t use windows 11 so fuck it, they are getting Linux with KDE and they will never know the difference). I’m in the office working on the machine, showing my stepfather how to use it and making sure there’s nothing tripping him up when my mother walks in and starts complaining about how horrible my father was and all the things he supposedly did when they were married.

Whatever. It’s been over 30 years and she’s still complaining but she swears she’s totally over him.

Mom starts in on how she loved it when we all still lived together in the same house and how wonderful that was before we grew up.

I’m instantly pissed. We were poor as fuck. I was stuck at home for years and only let out for school. There were some exceptions like family thanksgivings and such but I wasn’t allowed to go out and have friends or do anything because mom was concerned my siblings “might burn the house down.” I had no authority over them but if their homework wasn’t done, chores weren’t done, they weren’t home when she expected them it was MY fault and I was in trouble. Fuck her.

I tell her that’s a weird way to remember things. I remember we were poor and barely had food most of the time.

Mom: “oh no, we were never poor.”

Me: “we screened your calls. You didn’t want to talk to the bank.”

Mom: “that didn’t happen.”

Me: -blink-

Mom: “…I just remember being happy then.” (She wasn’t. She was screaming all the time) “in fact, I think it would be great if you and your sister and brother all lost your jobs and homes and had to move back in with me. We could all live under one roof again. Wouldn’t that be great?”

-record scratch-

Me: “when times were tough for me, I lived in a homeless shelter for a while just to avoid living with you. And my siblings have kids of their own now. Why would you be happy about them losing their homes?!”

Mom: “it would be nice.”

My mother was really upset when she discovered my nephews were uncircumcised. Just ridiculously upset. She went off about the whole thing, squawking to family members how horrible it was that her grandkids don’t have their penises properly mangled and I’m guessing nobody in the family agreed with her take so she came to me about it.

I’m not really a roll-with-it kind of guy. If she’s being crazy, I call her out. So she usually tries to get her fix elsewhere. But that day she came to me with this so it looks like her little penis snit isn’t generating the response she wanted.

Mom: “Can you believe they didn’t do that? They are terrible parents! Don’t you think that’s weird?”

(This was a while ago so I’m paraphrasing but the point is my mother asked for my opinion on something that involves neither of us. Buckle up.)

Me: “I think it’s weird you are upset about the aesthetics of a child’s penis.”

Mom: “It will look weird!”

Me: “You had me circumcised as a kid. It still looks weird. Penises are just weird. So what?”

Mom: “But they will look different from the other kids.”

Me: “So what? It’s genitalia, not an HOA.”

Mom: “I don’t understand why they wouldn’t do it though.”

Me: “Let’s look at this differently. You are upset a medical procedure that is unnesscarry isn’t being forced on a child. So let’s say it is considered normal for a woman to have a single breast. They naturally have two but that’s just weird so when a girl is born, she is strapped down and breast tissue is removed from one side of her chest. Best to do it when they are too young to remember, which is great because you don’t anesthetize them or put them under since that’s too risky for a child. There are some deaths but it’s usually fine so nobody cares. This is NORMAL so it’s fine.

In this scenario, a parent decides they don’t want their daughter subjected to that and opt out. She can get it done as an adult if she wants, you aren’t taking options away, you’re giving her a choice regarding her body she can make herself when she’s older. Nobody’s forcing anything on anyone.

How do you feel about this scenario?”

Mom: (looks up from Facebook on her phone) “are you threatening me?”

She’s always like this. Anything she disagrees with is a threat somehow. Considering I agree with her on fuck all, I must be a terrifying figure to her.

for years, my sister and I have been saying we are going to have the best book to publish when mom finally dies. Until then, the entire family just mocks her internally.

Until now!

NoWireHangers exits so you can share your toxic family member stories in a public forum. Air out that dirty laundry! Spill that tea! Threaten mom with shady pines! Go nuts here.

I’ll be adding stories as they come to mind but everyone join in and have fun while we share and possibly laugh at the trauma.