When I was in high school, I headed to bed one night, not bothering to turn on lights along the way. Fortunately, I did turn on my room light. A huge spider was sitting in the middle of my bed — at least six inches long. This is not normal here.

I quickly ran upstairs.

Me: “Dad! There’s a huge spider on my bed!”

Dad: *Laughs* “Huge, huh?”

Laughing some more, he grabbed a fly swatter. I tried to warn him, but he was too busy laughing at me to listen.

He walked into the room, and startled exclamations replaced the laughing as he hurriedly backed out.

Later that night we saw more, even bigger spiders outside. Dad took the BB gun instead of the fly swatter.

We still don’t know what they were; Dad said he had never seen anything like them, and I have never seen any again. It was a long time before I walked around the basement in the dark after that.

This happened about thirty years ago. I was definitely the a**hole in this situation, but in my defense, I was five.

My family’s home phone number was one digit off from a sporting goods store in my town called Joe Jones. Naturally, we’d get a fair number of calls from people with the wrong number. We had caller ID, so my parents would see an unfamiliar number on the ringing phone and say, “Looks like it might be someone trying to call Joe Jones again.” They’d pick up and say, “Hello? I’m sorry, you have the wrong number,” and then just hang up and say, “Yep. Joe Jones again.”

Now, since I was five, I failed to realize two key things about this situation:

• “Joe Jones” was the name of a store, not a person an easy mistake to make.

• It was different people calling each time.

Since my parents could always tell when it was a call for Joe Jones, I thought it was always the same number that they kept recognizing. I had only ever used the speed dial to make an outgoing call, so I assumed some friend of Joe’s had just misprogrammed their phone to call us instead of him and was really lazy about fixing it. I was annoyed that this person kept bothering us.

Then came the day of the story. My dad was at work, and my mom was home with me. She was busy with something when the phone rang and asked me to answer it. I went over to the kitchen phone and reached up to pull it off the hook.

Me: “Hello?”

Caller: “Hi. Is this Joe Jones?”

I was finally talking to the person who had been bothering us! I summoned up all the righteous fury young me could muster.

Me: *VERY sternly* “No! He doesn’t live here! Stop calling us!”

My mom jumped up and snatched the phone from me to apologize to the caller and smooth things over.

After she hung up, she took the time to talk to me to make sure I understood what was actually going on and how to be polite over the phone. She wasn’t angry.

These days, I always try to be polite on the phone, regardless of the situation. I think back to this incident as being the day I learned that lesson.

Thanks, Mom. I miss you.

My brother-in-law and my sister are born-again Christians of ten years, in a sect that does not condone alcohol or gambling. I have no problem with this ethos, but [Brother-In-Law] loves to shove his religious views down our throats at every family event… and it’s draining.

My parents were brought up in the same religion but are very laid back about the rules. They believe that what they do is their choice alone; everybody else can do their own thing. I’m agnostic.

I play the national lottery (£2 a week), and I like to have a glass of wine with meals out. [Brother-In-Law] comments on this every time we meet. He comments, “It’s a sin.” I say, “Only for you, not for me.”

This year, I won a few thousand in the lottery. I decided to give away some money to my parents and in-laws so they could go on a lovely holiday next year with the grandkids.

[Brother-In-Law] found out about the money and got my sister to call me to ask for their share.

Me: “[Brother-In-Law] has made it very clear that gambling is a sin and any money received is tainted by that sin. I wouldn’t want him to compromise his faith by accepting sinful money.”

My sister laughed and said she would relay the message to [Brother-In-Law].

[Brother-In-Law] is now not speaking to me. Oh, dear, what a shame.

My father’s ancient bar phone finally died; the battery won’t hold a charge. For some reason, he decided to buy a smartphone — without consulting me, the person who is expected to fix all things he deems IT-related.

Dad: “[My Name], can you come give me a hand with my new phone?”

Me: “What new phone?”

Dad: “The new phone I bought yesterday.”

He proudly shows off said device.

I decide to skip telling him off for buying it without asking me because he’s never listened before — why would he start now?

Me: “Ooookay. What’s up with it?”

Dad: “I just downloaded an app, and now I can’t find it. I’ve tried everything!“

The phone is thrust into my hands. I stare at an Android system far newer than anything I’ve encountered.

My Internal Monologue: “I have no f****** idea how this works. And I can’t see what’s on the screen very well because I’m colourblind, and the background image is making things hard to read. But I don’t think I can break anything unless I really try. I guess I’ll just start in one corner and randomly press buttons until I figure it out.”

I click on the first icon. Lo and behold, there’s the app!

Dad: *Watching over my shoulder* “How did you do that? I clicked on everything, and it didn’t do that for me!”

Me: *While adding the app to his home screen* “Clearly, you didn’t try everything, or you would have found the app. Was there anything else?”

Dad: “No. Thanks for fixing that.”

Tech-wizard image preserved.

This story reminded me of my grandmother. When people asked her age, she would proudly tell them:

Grandmother: “I just had my sixteenth birthday!”

She wasn’t lying; she was born on February 29th. It blew my mind a little when I was a kid.

Related:
My Mom Has Been Forty-Nine For Decades, Part 2
My Mom Has Been Forty-Nine For Decades