My cousin has had lots of partners, and she has two kids.

Grandma: “[Cousin], are you ever going to get married?”

Cousin: “It’s not the same nowadays. We don’t buy cars without test-driving them first.”

Grandma: “Yeah. But they don’t let you put a hundred thousand miles on them, either.”

The point goes to Granny.

CONTENT WARNING: Stabbing, Car Accident (Everyone lives)

My mother-in-law is the main character in every story. She told this tale over a family meal many years ago when Black Friday was still a mob-inducing event.

Mother-In-Law: “Did I tell you what happened on Black Friday?”

[Brother-In-Law] glanced at my husband and me. We knew we were in for quite a story.

Brother-In-Law: “What happened?”

Mother-In-Law: “Well, first, my car would not start. I guess I left my dome light on again and the battery died. I had to go wake up [Neighbor] to get a jump, and he cussed me out! Just for knocking on his door!”

Brother-In-Law: “When was this?”

Mother-In-Law: “I was going out for Black Friday deals.”

Me: “So, like… 3:00 am?”

Mother-In-Law: “I needed help! Anyway, he got the car started, and I went to get gas at the gas station. Well, the place was mobbed because no one can plan ahead and get gas before shopping—” *scoffs* “—and this fight broke out over one of the pumps. One person stabbed the other, and the ambulance and the police showed up. I was lucky to make it out alive!”

Husband: “Were you at the pump they wanted?”

Mother-In-Law: “No, I was in line, four cars back.”

Brother-In-Law: “So, you weren’t really in danger?”

Mother-In-Law: “I was! Were you not listening?”

Brother-In-Law: “Right, of course. Sorry.”

Mother-In-Law: “Then, while I was on the ramp to get on the highway, the car in front of me was trying to merge in, and a trucker was trying to get to the side of the road at the same time. They collided, and the car burst into flames!”

Husband: *Genuinely concerned* “Did you call 911?!”

Mother-In-Law: “No, darling, I had to get [some sale item] before they ran out. Honestly, though, it was the worst morning of my life.”

Me: “So… you woke your elderly neighbor because you didn’t turn off your dome light, someone else got stabbed nowhere near you, another person lost their car and possibly more… and you had a bad morning?”

Mother-In-Law: “Yes! Who else would have so many bad things happen to them in one day?”

Husband: “Only you, I suppose.”

Yes, we have tried many times to get her to understand that just because she is part of the story, it doesn’t mean the story is about her. But as usual, we are wrong. It’s not a senility issue; his family has assured me that she has been this way her entire life.

And for closure, I did look up the accident and stabbing incidents. All parties who were actually involved did survive — as did [Mother-In-Law], which is clearly the most important part of all of this.

I’m the oldest child in my family, so I tend to bear the brunt of first-child anxiety that every parent experiences. When I was a teenager, my phone had GPS tracking so my parents could always know where I was. (We had the same feature on every phone, which was handy whenever we needed an estimate for how long it’d be before someone came home.)

When I went off to college, the tracker remained. It was mostly only used so my parents could reassure themselves that I was safe without infringing on my life with constant calls and texts. It was a good system, especially in the early days when my parents were dealing with the worst of the bittersweet “my baby isn’t a baby anymore” feelings.

One spring day, my parents checked in on the GPS app and saw that my location was pinged in a small apartment complex a significant distance off-campus. Cue immediate panic from my father, who was convinced that I’d been kidnapped. My mother made him calm down, and they sent a text and continued to check every ten minutes or so.

No reply. They continued to send texts. They tried calling, but no answer. This went on for almost an hour, and by the end of it, my dad was pacing and probably ten seconds away from calling the National Guard.

Finally, I picked up my phone, saw the texts and several missed calls, and excused myself to call back.

Me: “Hello?”

Parents: “WHERE ARE YOU?!”

I explained to them that I was at a friend’s apartment with my church group and we were eating pizza and playing video games. I’d had my phone turned off because that’s just good guest etiquette. My mother then filled me in on the drama, and I’ve teased them about it ever since.

My dad was not exactly the most technologically up-to-date person in the world. Jokes went around his workplace to check for white-out on computer monitors after Dad had to type up reports.

Dad learned the wonders of the Internet and Googling sometime after 2016 when he retired and had time to sit at his own computer and play around.

In 2018, two years after retiring, my dad came into my room.

Dad: *Excited* “Guess what I found!”

Me: *Full of dread* “Um, no idea.”

Dad: “There’s an entire website dedicated to homemade videos that tell you how to do all sorts of things! Anything from gold panning to how to change a tire!”

Me: *Trying hard not to laugh* “Ah, yes, YouTube. Yeah, Dad, that’s been a thing since about 2005.”

For months afterward, I heard Dad (formerly a cabinet maker and landscaper) yelling at videos about how some random person on YouTube was doing a woodworking project wrong or making it harder on themselves when demonstrating how to landscape their yard.

The funny thing was that I had talked about YouTube for years and had even shown Dad funny videos. But discovering it on his own was like he had hunted down a treasure chest.

I’m an American in Japan, and my boyfriend is Japanese. My parents decided to come visit my boyfriend and me for Christmas, and together we plan to go on a short trip. However, my boyfriend and his family don’t speak much English, while my parents don’t speak much Japanese, so my parents decided to study Japanese while my boyfriend studied a little English so they could meet in the middle.

Today, my mom called because she was excited to tell me all she has learned.

Mom: “彼氏は美味しいですか？” “Kareshi ha oishiidesuka?”

That translates to “Is your boyfriend delicious?”

When we laughed, she immediately fixed it and changed 美味しい/oishii (delicious) to 優しい/yasashi (friendly), but we were already all laughing so hard.

I can’t help but feel like the luckiest person in the world because both my boyfriend and my parents love me so much they’re willing to learn foreign languages (and incredibly difficult ones, at that) so that they can communicate with the other half of my life.