Mother-In-Law Horror Stories

31. Grandma Doesn’t Know Best

So let me tell the story of how my friend saved a boy from a mistake his grandmother made. Two weeks ago, said friend and I went to the cinema to watch Glass. We get in line at the snack stand behind an older woman and a little boy, I’d guess he was four or five years old. She tells him, “You can have anything you like, just pick! But don’t tell mommy!”

This was a red flag to me being a lurker over here. Anyhow, the boy picks a Mr. Tom bar, which is peanuts covered in caramel/honey (?) or some such sugary glue. Does anyone see where this is going yet? The grandma gets her stuff and pays, and they go toward the staircase leading to the theaters and we order our stuff. By the time we’re done, I had pretty much forgotten all about them.

But when we got halfway up the stairs, all heck broke loose. The boy suddenly falls down in front of us, the grandma a few steps ahead of him. At first I thought he just tripped or missed a step, but he was coughing. We didn’t notice right away as we were chatting, but my friend worked in childcare before and crouched down to help him up.

He looks at her and tries to say something but can’t get a word out. The grandma gets upset and tells my friend to step away and tells the boy to get up. My friend says: “I think he has trouble breathing.” “No way, he just fell and is upset, get away!” in a ticked-off tone from grandma. The boy now starts wheezing and putting his hands to his face, the candy bar falling down.

Now, at first my friend thought a piece of the bar went into the wrong pipe, and patted the boy on the back quite heavily. As the wheezing gets worse, my friend realizes much faster than me what is going on and tells the grandma: “He can’t breathe, is he allergic? Do you have an epi-pen or medication?” She loses it and starts crying because she doesn’t have anything with her.

My friend shouts to the crowd that a child is having an allergic reaction and if anyone has an epi-pen. A man comes running with a pen and she administers it. By this time a crowd has formed, but everyone is just standing and staring while the grandma is crouched next to the boy, crying over him. My friend has to remove her to give him space to breathe.

I am frozen in place, completely useless. My friend looks at me and pretty firmly tells me to call an ambulance. I would have botched that too, if the man on the line didn’t remain calm and talk me through what he needed to know. About five minutes later (man those were long) the ambulance arrives and takes the kid away. My friend offers to drive the grandma to the hospital.

Now, the rest of this is hearsay, as I can only report what my friend told me went down. In the car, my friend tells the still sobbing grandma to call the boy’s parents. She says, “I’ll call my son.” As my friend tells it, she could hear the father scream through the phone that he and his wife told her multiple times about his allergy and if the kid died, that was on her.

At the hospital, my friend left her information with one of the nurses in case an investigation was going to be done. She then quickly got out of there because the parents arrived and a shouting match with grandma ensued. So why am I telling this now? Today, the mother and the little boy called my friend and said they would like to send her a thank-you card for all her help.

The mother said that the boy made a full recovery and she was grateful for her son’s life. After a few questions, it became clear that the little boy is not allowed to be alone with grandma from now on and he got his very own cool backpack (Batman) with emergency medicine! Happy ends for all! 🙂

Wiyohipeyata

32. Raw Emotion

My mother-in-law and I don’t have the greatest relationship over the two months I’ve been married to her daughter. We got married after my then-girlfriend moved into my apartment. When we decided to get hitched, she didn’t want to tell her parents and sent them a letter instead. They wanted her to marry a guy from church, and they’d had it figured out since she was in elementary school.

My parents came to the ceremony because…they actually like both of us. I was at work yesterday and the mother-in-law texted me around 10 am and asked me if I would be interested in getting dinner with her after I got off. I thought this was mad weird because I’m pretty sure both my mother and father-in-law hate my guts. She texted me the address, and it was the most expensive steakhouse in our city.

I let my wife know about these post-work plans and that I’d be late. Well, this woman wanted to talk about us and how she thought I was going to ruin her daughter’s life. My dad always tells me when I’m not sure what to say, listen more than I speak lest I say something stupid. She asked if my wife was pregnant…and I said no.

Her next question was then, what reason was there to get married? I said I love her and didn’t see the point in waiting. Her whole attitude changed from warm and curious to really apathetic. I assumed we were going to do separate bills or that she was just paying because she invited me. She asked for the check, one check. The waiter placed it in the middle of the table…and she asked if I was going to get it.

I thought she was joking. This woman’s car could probably pay off my student debt twice. I laughed uncomfortably and she pushed it toward me. It’s a good thing I’m used to getting the cheapest thing on the menu (chicken). I got the same thing for my wife, so my part of the bill came up to like $70 for both our orders. She got a $200 steak.

I told her I’d pay for my orders, started to take out some bills, and she said that that was poor manners. I do okay for us (my wife’s still looking for work), but not “I can drop almost $300 on dinner” okay. My hand physically would not allow me to place my debit card in the book for that amount. I asked her to excuse me because I had to call my dad.

I then paid separately and left without telling her mom. When I was waiting for the train, I felt a lot of things. Stupid, inadequate (because I couldn’t pay that, almost like I wasn’t living up to this standard she’d created for her daughter). But I got several texts and calls from my mother-in-law, which I dismissed but took a minute to look at my lock screen, which is a picture of my wife from her college graduation last year, and I felt happier.

I told her about it when I got home, and she broke down laughing that I left her mom in the restaurant.

throwaway-mj879

33. Difference Of Opinion

For as long as I can remember, my mom liked to tell the story of how my brother gave me a nickname when he was a toddler. The story goes like this: my brother was little, just learning to talk. He hasn’t learned to say my name yet, though in all fairness, it’s a fairly difficult name for small children to say. One day, she realizes that while he doesn’t say my actual name, he has given me a nickname.

That nickname? “Way.” At first, she’s confused. It’s cute! But where did it come from? Then one day, I was getting into typical toddler shenanigans, and by shenanigans, I mean trying to sit on her lap while she’s holding my brother. She pushes me away and says, “(my full name) GO AWAY!” To which my brother giggled and said, “Way!”

And that was when she realized that she had told me to “go away” so often as a kid that my brother thought that was my name. She looooved to tell that story, thinking it was just so adorable. I grew up thinking that as well. It took me almost 30 years and having kids to realize that it wasn’t.

like_a_narnian

34. Drastic Measures

Yesterday, my husband, our two kids, and me got back from a family vacation. This vacation was planned, and my mother-in-law knew we were going. We came home to a nightmare. We found out this morning that she reported my husband missing on day two of our two-week vacation. We think it’s because he didn’t reply to her messages the second she sent them, so she decided to take drastic measures.

We’re not in full contact with my mother-in-law, and she’s been upping her crazy in the last few years, especially since we got married. We’re probably somewhere between medium and low contact. She’s also on a pretty strict information diet. We pretty much only tell her things when it’s too late for her to mess them up, or when we have no choice because other family members (or our kids, which has happened a few times) have let slip information that they didn’t realize we were keeping from her.

We’ve talked to the authorities this morning and said that we want it noted wherever possible that she filed a false report. They’ve said they can’t do more than that because technically they “found” my husband because he was missing for over 10 days. But he was on a planned vacation. What. The. Actual. Heck? I just…I just don’t know what to do anymore!

Permalink

35. Take A Picture, It’ll Last Longer

Turns out the pictures weren’t “destroyed while uploading them.” You know? The pictures of my child’s first Christmas? That Christmas where my mother-in-law wouldn’t let anyone else take any other photos because her camera was so much better than what we had? That one where she called me to tell me in the most laconic tone of voice that she had lost them all?

The ones she heard me cry over losing, several times? Yeah, she had those all along. My baby sister nonchalantly swiped past them on her phone while showing me something else, and I about half lost my mind. Apparently the whole family has them except me. Why? Why would you do this to a new mom? This was years before I ever opposed her in any significant way.

What could she have possibly gotten out of taking my baby’s first Christmas pictures from me?! What the heck?? I went no contact years ago for something completely unrelated, but this came out of left field for me, and I sobbed on my husband in the kitchen like a child. It was just so unexpectedly incredibly mean, and I honest to God don’t get why.

I’m still angry. At least I have them now, and my baby was exactly as adorable as I remember. But looking at the pictures now I’m seeing something neither my husband or I noticed at the time. I’m happy and smiling at my baby in all of them, and she looks completely furious/silently seething/like she’s sucking on a bag of lemons in every. single. one.

Aggressivecleaning

36. Caught In The Act

We have a nice security camera set up with the “ring doorbell” and a bunch of other connected cameras. My favorite new feature is the intercom. There can be a bit of a delay, but I can open the app on my phone to see what’s happening live and then I can choose to talk through the speaker attached to it. Like a dutiful wife, I’ve been using it to scare the bejeezus out of my husband.

The best part is having saved footage of him almost dropping our groceries. Muah ha ha. He’s been getting me back. It’s good fun and it means we’re both checking it often. I was secretly hoping to be able to use it on my awful mother-in-law—and yesterday I got my chance! I got an alert of movement on my phone when I was at work. I stepped out to somewhere I could have some privacy and I watched.

She was peeking through windows at the side of the house, where the kitchen is. She worked her way from left to right and looked through each window, then started looking through the windows in the front. I also saw her pull out her phone and use the flashlight to try to see in better. My husband and I have been drawing the curtains every morning to prevent just this, so she probably didn’t see much.

First thing I did was text my husband: “Pleeeease let me have this!” He agreed in exchange for me making dinner. Fair. I started giggling as she moved closer to the front of the house, because I was so excited to freak her out. I had to think about taxes and trips to the dentist to stifle my laughter and sound serious enough for this to work.

Finally she was at the front door. I turned it on and said “INTRUDER. DETECTED. INTRUDER. DETECTED. COMMENCING COUNTDOWN. 60 SECONDS TO VACATE PROPERTY. INTRUDER. DETECTED. 55 SECONDS…” and so on. She wasn’t around to hear much of it. She scampered off like a cat that wandered too close to an automatic sprinkler.

regretfortwo

37. Make It Make Sense

My mother-in-law is a judgemental old bat who doesn’t understand or like me, or really her son. In the past, she’s expressed her opinions about every aspect of our lives being “strange” to her. I thought we had come to a nice point about jewelry, but apparently not. I only mildly care, because I’m pretty low contact with her at this point.

My husband is going to Florida by himself next weekend, and my mother-in-law is confused. Background: Because my father was tacky enough to pass during the holiday season, without even considering her plans, I haven’t seen her in months. My husband dealt with his family entirely during this time, and sheltered me from any comments she made after she told me that she wanted him to go to her stupid party instead of my father’s funeral.

I’ve spent the last few months dealing with will and banking issues, as well as supporting my mom. My work has been super supportive and flexible, but still taken all my PTO and I’m doing a lot of “work from home” and catch up at weird hours/weekends, whatever. I cannot take a vacation right now. At the same time, we live in a winter place, and while this winter hasn’t been the worst, my husband still wants/needs some sunshine, and I want a husband who isn’t moping around with Seasonal Affective Disorder.

I have absolutely no spoons for him right now, so off to Florida he goes, while I will probably spend the weekend catching up on work. Usually we would take a week in March or a mini-break around now, but it won’t work for us this year. All caught up? Great. So, we had dinner with them a few days ago, and my husband mentions this plan.

MIL: “…So you’re leaving her by herself.” Me: (foolishly thinks she cares that I clearly need a break as well, and/or to express some sort of concern for my well-being): “Well I wish I…” MIL: (voice rising)” How do you two even stay together?? This isn’t even a real marriage! You have separate names and bank accounts and you won’t have children and YOU DON’T EVEN WEAR HIS RING!!”

Me: “…..Nope.” I got up, told them goodnight, and left the restaurant. I think she was sputtering something, but I honestly only heard buzzing. As I was waiting for a Lyft, my husband found me. His dad called, and he answered and said, “I’ll call you guys in a few days. Keep her away from us until then.” She hasn’t reached out to me, and if she has to my husband he’s keeping it to himself.

DeeplyBison

38. Three’s Company

My boyfriend and are a gay couple, and we’ve been together for four years now. Since gay marriage is illegal where we live, we won’t be able to get married but still, I have a mother-in-law. And quite a nasty one. When her son told her he’s gay, she didn’t believe him because, in her mind, gay men are feminine, fluttering their hands and speaking in high-pitched voices.

My boyfriend is masculine, so he doesn’t fit into her stereotypes and must be joking about being gay. When he brought me over to meet his mother, she realized it’s true after all and there was a scandal, a huge scandal. My mother-in-law didn’t talk to him for a few months, then she decided that she might as well get to know the person her son is together with.

The first thing she asked me was what I do for a living and I told her I’m a police officer. As soon as I said it, she started laughing uncontrollably. It looked as if she was having a seizure, she couldn’t stop laughing. My boyfriend and I, we couldn’t understand what was so funny about it and he was like, “Mom, what are you laughing about?”

She calmed down and was like, “You’re right, that’s actually not funny at all. Officers should be real, tough men. If fairies work there now, soon we won’t be able to go on a street, because criminals will bloom like crazy.” She looked at me again and said “I thought you were a hairdresser in the best-case scenario. Not an officer.” That’s actually nothing new for me.

Many people have told me they would have never thought I’m an officer when they first met me. I don’t know why, maybe because I look younger than I am (I’m 30). But they were nice about it, but my mother-in-law for some reason said it with a tint of evil in her voice. Ironically, that’s how my boyfriend and I met each other—he was partying, made a couple of stupid decisions that led to me detaining him, and it all kind of unfolded from there.

But that’s not even the real story behind this post. It was just a bit of an introduction so that you’d understand what she’s like. The real problem was that some renovation is going on right now in her house and she needed a place to stay for two weeks. She wanted to come and live with us, my husband and me, and we decided—why not?

Let’s be good people, it’s just two weeks. Well, wrong. Before we kicked her out, she stayed with us for five days only and it was a nightmare. First, she didn’t respect the way we live. Of course, she didn’t have to go to bed when we go to bed, but she could at least behave quietly. As soon as we turned off the lights in our room, she started running through the house like crazy, to the kitchen and back, to the bathroom and back.

She wasn’t even trying to be quiet; it sounded as if she was deliberately thumping her feet on the floor. Honestly, an elephant in the house would have made less noise. Whenever we talked to her about it, she was like, “Well, what can I do if I’m hungry or need to use the bathroom? If you were tired, you would sleep, nothing would bother you.”

One night I got sick and tired of it because I had an early shift the next day. I came up to her and I said, “I think you have forgotten that I’m an officer and what you’re doing is an offense. It’s night time and you’re disturbing the peace. I’m giving you a warning now, but if you continue, I’m detaining you, and tomorrow we’re going to the station together and you’re facing charges.”

She complained to my boyfriend that I was threatening her, but he didn’t defend her and I guess I scared her because noise at night was no longer an issue after that. She also had disgusting habits. She would never do dishes; she just put her dirty plate or cup in the sink and waited for us to wash it. Or she would eat a candy, not finish it and just stick it onto something.

We found candies stuck on the side of the table, windowsills, and sides of chairs all the time. She would cut her nails in the bathtub and just leave them there, and when you get inside the bath, you step right onto the nails with your bare feet. It’s simply disgusting. I don’t know if she does this in her own house too, I’ve only been there once but everything seemed clean. But the last straw happened just a few days ago.

That’s when we were like—hit the road, mother-in-law. It was at night, and we were in our room and my boyfriend wanted to get intimate. At first, I didn’t feel comfortable with it, as his mother was just a few rooms away from us, but then I thought—it’s night, it’s late, she must be sleeping and we’ll be quiet. And we were quiet, to hear us you’d have to literally press your ear against our door.

Well, that’s what she was doing I guess, because the door suddenly swung open. She came inside, turned on the light, and started screaming, “What is going on in here, what are you doing, why are you naked, have you got no shame?! My son, I didn’t raise you like that!” I was like, what do you think is going on? Like, we’re in our house, we’re a couple, we’ve been together for four years, we love each other.

Do you really think we don’t ever sleep together? Are you that deluded? So the next day we told her to pack her bags and move out. My boyfriend gave her enough money for a hotel, where she can stay until her house is ready to live in again. We explained that we cannot live with her, because she obviously doesn’t know what “sanitary” means and doesn’t respect our privacy.

She was wailing and crying loudly for what seemed like forever. My boyfriend even had to pack her bag for her because she was sitting on the sofa, refusing to move. If she had behaved like a normal human being, this could have been different but she is who she is and we cannot have her in our house for another week or we’ll go crazy. When she finally left, she looked at us so very hatefully.

LimePopcorn

39. The Wicked Witch Of Wall Street

Dear universe: I would like to surrender my superpower of “attracting crazy people.” If an equivalent exchange is required and requests are permitted, I would like to instead have the superpower of “instantly identifying title, artist name, and release year of any song after hearing three seconds’ worth of the track.” Thank you for your time; I await your reply.

So, while I’m waiting to see if my superpower exchange goes through, here’s a story about how my superpower exchange has not gone through. I innocently went to the drugstore to fill a prescription and this happened. While I’m sitting in the pharmacy waiting area, a young mother and an older woman are in the baby supplies aisle.

The young mom looks, frankly, like dung on a Triscuit. She’s pasty, her hair is lank, she’s wearing a profoundly rumpled set of scrub pants and shirt that aren’t matched in color, has no jewelry aside from a wedding ring, and she has the exhausted, thousand-yard stare of someone for whom sleep is but a curious fusion of cruel joke and fond memory.

She’s leaning on the push bar of the cart as if it’s the only thing holding her upright. In the cart is a carseat with a baby in it, and the kid is engaged in intense fussing noises, punctuated about every 10 seconds by a wrenching hiccup. The older woman is flawless, turned out in a stylish emerald-green twinset, with slacks one shade darker.

Her hair is a 1940s-Rita-Hayworth cascade of glossy dark waves, not a strand out of place. She’s wearing Louboutin pumps, diamond earrings, an array of tasteful rings on her manicured hands, a Panthère de Cartier-style gold and enamel leopard draping around her neck. Her makeup is camera-ready. And her peach-slicked lips are flapping nonstop, venting criticism.

“My son” should have picked someone who could keep herself put together better. “My son” should be taking care of these things. “My son” doesn’t understand how much trouble it is to take time out of a busy day to do a run to the drugstore. “My son” ought to understand how important the business deal is that she’s brokering. Also, she doesn’t see why her daughter-in-law is breastfeeding when formula is so much easier to deal with.

Yes, of course, it’s far easier to buy, store, transport, measure, mix, and prepare formula than it is to pop out a breast that literally dispenses infant sustenance by itself and feed the sprog at any time or place. She’s apparently able to breathe through her skin, because I swear she didn’t interrupt her rant for anything as mundane as respiration.

And this goes on for five solid minutes while the daughter-in-law stares at the shelves and, I suspect, daydreams about going temporarily deaf. As the baby’s fussing ramps up, the mother-in-law stops abruptly, forcing the daughter-in-law to halt the cart suddenly to avoid plowing over her (I privately wished she would). The mother-in-law turns around to lean over the baby and coo in the most unbearably irritating voice…

MIL: “Aww, whassamatter, baaaaabyyyy?! Is Mama not doing anything to stop those terrible, teeeerrible hiccups?!?!” My eye spasms. My hands close into fists. And then my mouth opens by itself… “What in the heck do you expect her to do about the goddarn hiccups, lady? Throat-punch the baby?” The mother-in-law spins around with a look of shock, like no one has ever spoken to her that way in her life.

Quick overview: I’m wearing a cowboy hat, grey sweatpants, combat boots, and a T-shirt from The Mountain that depicts a cat and a Tarot spread. No makeup. No jewelry aside from my own wedding ring. On a scale of Scabies-Raddled Hobo to This Polished Woman, I am standing on an overpass in the rain holding a cardboard sign that reads “Please Help, God Bless.”

The mother-in-law, in a tone that suggests she just found me stuck to the hot-rod-red bottom of her left pump: “What did you say?!” Me, constitutionally unable to stop myself from responding to that tone: “Are you this hard to be around all the time, or is it a special day?” MIL: “How dare you?!” Those three words feel like the key turned in the lock of the cage that keeps my inner witch hidden from the world.

Me: “How dare I? How dare you? I’m a complete stranger, and I can see that your daughter-in-law is exhausted. She needs support and rest. She doesn’t need to be berated in public by the Wicked Witch of Wall Street.” MIL, spluttering: “We’re leaving!” Me, bit between my teeth and running free: “You don’t have to leave with her. I’ll drive you home.”

The daughter-in-law dissolving quietly into tears: “YES. PLEASE. YES.” And then I drive a sobbing young mother home in her own minivan. We leave the Wicked Witch of Wall Street screaming furiously on the sidewalk outside the drugstore to call herself a cab. The daughter-in-law tells me that the last month has been really bad.

The baby is going through a period of vast discontent; her husband got a promotion and is overseeing a major IT server migration at his job and has been working all kinds of weird hours (and the baby is a Daddy’s boy, which probably explains the discontent); her sister, who normally helps out, flew to another state to help her own in-laws with a family emergency; her best friend, who also helps out, is down sick along with her own two young kids.

Her sister is due to come home Wednesday, but the daughter-in-law is flat out of supplies and thought she could handle just a quick ride to and from the drugstore with her mother-in-law. Mother-in-law is obnoxiously classist and materialistic as heck, but normally manageable. She’s only gone full-bore witchface since the baby was born and her son got that promotion, because now her son and daughter are always so overwhelmed and “can’t handle their own lives.”

I’m planning to get myself a cab back to the store to get my car, but when I pull into her driveway, there’s another car there. She gasps and says “My husband’s home!” My first thought was that the mother-in-law must have called him at work and now he’s going to chew his wife out for being mean to Mommy. The front door opens, and the husband comes jogging out.

I have to note here that he’s a physical carbon copy of his mother with a Y chromosome. He’s freaking beautiful. He rushes up to the van, opens the passenger door to ask his wife if she’s okay, kisses her, says a hasty “thank you” to me, then goes to the back door to get the baby, who goes from fussing to happy giggly noises, because Daddy.

I stare at the guy for a moment, then turn to the daughter-in-law and say, “My God, you are so freaking lucky. He’s Henry Cavill with Godiva-chocolate eyes.” She smiles (first smile I’d seen on her) and happily says, “I know.” Turns out, he’d gotten a screaming voicemail from his mother and is kind enough to play it for us. When I heard it, I nearly burst out laughing.

“YOUR SORRY WITCH OF A WIFE LEFT ME AT THE STORE AND DROVE OFF WITH A TOTAL STRANGER WHO INSULTED ME FOR SPEAKING MY MIND! SHE’S PROBABLY BEING KIDNAPPED AND MY GRANDSON WILL NEVER BE SEEN AGAIN! SHE’S HURTING MY GRANDSON, HE WON’T STOP CRYING! HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME?!” I translate this as “I am a harpy and your wife abandoned me here for Satan to pick up at his infernal convenience, so you should go home and get her side of the story.”

The pair of them also crack up laughing, which is an improvement over the daughter-in-law starting to cry again. I get a ride back to the drugstore from Henry Cavill’s clone. Fortunately, his mother is gone, and I say “fortunately” because he spends the entire drive snarling “I can’t believe she would do this. I can’t believe it. She knows what’s going on in our lives, and she treats her that way?”

“She thinks she won’t tell me what really happened? She thinks I’ll get mad at her on her say-so? She thinks I’ll get mad at my tired-out wife who’s just trying to hold the house together while I work? No. No, she’s not getting away with that.” I think if she’d still been there, he’d have torn her seventeen new ones and jammed a football cleat up each and every one.

Incidentally, he didn’t just drop me off; he went in to get the stuff his wife hadn’t been able to pick up because she was busy fleeing from her mother-in-law. So, how was YOUR day?

GeneralBystander

40. Can’t Buy Me Love

I’m not going to go into details about my condition, but I’m terminally ill. I might have months left or years, depending on how well I respond to the treatment, but the point is—I’m going to die, it might happen soon, and my mother-in-law thinks she has a say in this. I want all of my finances to be in order before I pass, therefore I have written a will.

It includes all of those who are dear to me: my wife and daughter, my brother, and my parents. As strange as it might sound, mother-in-law obviously expected to be included as well. For what reason I don’t know, but she got very displeased when she heard her name isn’t in the will. I have decided to leave the majority of what I own to my daughter.

My wife and the rest of the family totally agree. I’m leaving something to everybody else as well, but most of it is going to my daughter. She’s just two years old now and I likely will not live to even see 35. It breaks my heart that I won’t get to see her grow up, so the least I can do is make sure that lack of money isn’t an obstacle for her to succeed in life.

It’s hard for young adults to start building their lives without financial support and the money I’m leaving her will be enough for her to study, go to college, and partly cover the expenses of buying real estate. It comforts me that when she’s an adult she’ll know her dad did think of her future. Well, my mother-in-law started to make a scene out of this.

She insisted that no one does this, that everything must be split equally between all family members and she’s a family too, so she should be included in the will. It made me mad as heck. Like, who is she to tell me what I can and cannot do with my money? You know, the money I earned and saved over the years? I could give it all to a homeless stranger if I wanted to, she has nothing to do with it at all.

She’s just the mother of my wife, literally no one to me. She’s crazy if she thinks I’m going to leave her something. She said, “It’s pointless to leave so much money to a child! She’ll waste it all in parties and drinks when she’s old enough!” Well, I’m sure my wife and my parents will raise her right and teach her the value of money. My wife is an amazing woman and she’ll definitely put a lot of good qualities into our daughter.

She tried to get my parents on her side, trying to convince them they should all unite and protest to make me change the will. I said that I think the will and what I’ll leave to them is the least of my parents’ worries. They’re trying to accept the fact they’re going to lose their son. Leave them alone, money isn’t what they’re after at all.

My will is with my lawyer and will only be given to my family after my passing. I don’t keep it in my house so fortunately, my mother-in-law can’t get her hands on it. But she threatened us with courts and whatnot, claiming she’ll never let it go until she gets her share. We’re all distancing ourselves from her; everyone is going through a tough time already and we don’t need her negativity here.

No one, literally no one, has any complaints about the will but her. She’s acting as if there were millions on the table, which there’s not, I’m not that rich. I find it very hard to understand how dare she ask for something she never helped me to get. I have earned every cent I have by my own forces and she acts as if she put me into a pit of gold and expects me to throw the coins back at her.

And if she wants money so much, why not get her butt up and work.

Rain8021

41. I’m Not Who You Think I Am

I had a rather bad Memorial Day weekend. Long story short, I had a seizure and face-planted my bedroom door. After a fun ride to the hospital on a backboard and neck brace, a whole bunch of tests followed and I was admitted because as it turns out, my auto-immune condition isn’t quite being managed as well as I thought it was before now.

Day three and I feel well enough to walk around and even make a trip to the cafeteria downstairs to get something better than the standard hospital food. Now, I didn’t really have much in the way of clothing. My wife brought my favorite hoodie and clean underthings, but forgot pants of all things, so a really nice nurse scrounged up a pair of the hospital’s blue scrub pants for me.

So, I was happily free of the IV cart for the next few hours and decided to get some chocolate milk and maybe a tasty snack to treat myself and lift my spirits a bit. But it ended up being a rather sad, frustrating affair before I could even make it onto the elevator. I’m pretty slow walking but I’m just content to not be confined to bed or tangled in tubes, so I enjoy the sunlight and make friendly conversation with the day shift nurses as I pass by.

Sometimes it’s the small things that make me happy. But all that happiness goes away as I make it to the waiting area and elevator lobby. A ~60-year-old woman with the sourest expression on her face steps off the elevator—like she sucked on a whole barrel of lemons type of sour, lips puckered up tighter than a cat’s butt sour. So I try to give her a wide berth, but Pucker Face isn’t having it.

She marches straight up to me and gets well into my personal space, then—assuming I’m a nurse because I’m in scrubs—starts demanding that I take her to her son’s room and give her an immediate run down of his medical ailments. The exchange is as follows between me and the pucker-faced wonder (let’s call her PK): PK: Finally, one of you lazy people is going to take me to my son’s hospital room and explain to me my baby boy’s condition. I’m his mother after all and that wife of his just hasn’t been taking care of him as she should be.

Me: (thinking “The children’s hospital is next door”) ….what? PK: Oh, don’t play stupid—you’re not pretty enough for that. I know my son’s here and I want to see him right this instant. I think he was brought in on Friday. Me: (really confused and feeling bad for the kid) Uh, I don’t work here. PK: What do you mean you don’t work here? You have on scrubs in a hospital, you’re a nurse—NOW TAKE ME TO MY SON!

Me: (starting to get irritated and sassy) Dude, I’m not a nurse…not everyone who wears scrubs is a nurse. I just didn’t feel like going to the cafeteria in a gown with my butt flapping in the wind. PK: (waves hands as if that’s magically going to make me not being a nurse change in any way) You’re just using that as an excuse to not get in trouble for sucking at your job and being a little jerk.

Me: (holds up wrist—including the lovely bright red allergy band) Yeah, no. I’m not a nurse, I’m a patient and I really don’t have to be explaining this to you. Go find someone else who can help you, but you should probably not be such a witch about it. PK: (inching so close I put my hands up to push her back out of the four remaining inches of personal space) I will act however I want, and you better believe I’m going to get your butt fired. I want to speak to your supervisor. Such unprofessional behavior and talking back to a patient’s family—your bedside manner is atrocious.

Me: (pointing to the growing crowd) The head nurse is that way, and for the last time I don’t work here…I’m a patient just like your son, and being a jerk to people, especially nurses, is a good way to get thrown out on your butt by security. So, you might want to tone it down. By this time a couple of real nurses come over. All of them have clear name badges and credentials on display as well as these little communication devices that are like Star Trek Communicators but look and perform a lot less cool.

The head nurse, who was so sweet just like all the ones I had during my stay, had taken on the scary resting witch face that would make me think twice. Still, it didn’t even scare crazy woman. She barges right up to the nurse and demands to be taken to her son, spouting off his name and date of birth to basically everyone on the floor and then demands that I be fired.

PK: Oh, and fire that witch—she’s completely incompetent and rude. Head Nurse (HN): (deadpans with a chill game I’m rather envious of) She doesn’t work here and I’m going to have to ask you to refrain from yelling and harassing people. This is a hospital and people are trying to heal and rest. PK: I understand, but this woman isn’t letting me see my son and he needs his mommy right now. She needs to be dealt with for being such a terrible, irresponsible nurse.

Me: But I’m not a nurse…..? HN: Again, she is not employed here. After going back and forth for several minutes, Pucker Face can’t seem to wrap her brain around the fact that I don’t actually work at the hospital. She’s basically a broken record, calling for me to get fired like she’s forgotten why she’s here in the first place. Head Nurse is calm and has explained it as many different ways as she possibly can and is starting to rub her temples with what must be a nasty headache.

Finally after a couple of seconds of quiet, she turns to me. HN: Hey, you’re fired okay?” Me: …okay?… HN: (holding an elevator for me) Go on now, get on your way. I get on the elevator and head downstairs, incredibly grateful to be away from that monstrous woman, and go to collect my well-deserved prize and text my wife about the whole thing—she’ll find it hilarious. But the story doesn’t end there.

As it turns out, when they look up information for her son—who was actually two rooms down from mine—he specifically said his mother is on the list of people who absolutely under no circumstances could be allowed to visit. So, I watched her get dragged kicking, screaming, and biting through the hospital’s main lobby when I was returning from the cafeteria.

The chocolate milk and cookies were twice as tasty after that. Her son turned up that evening to apologize for his mother, since news of the crazy lady spread across the floor like wild fire. He and his family were really cool. They also have a restraining order against this crazy woman. Looks like we’re going to be physical therapy buddies now and we can swap crazy mom stories together.

calypso_cane

42. Sealing The Deal

Let me just start by saying that my mother-in-law had my husband young. She then split from his father and remarried. My husband is now 26 and she was still trying to get pregnant with the new husband up until a few years ago. BEFORE SOMEONE JUDGES, I understand that she feels sensitive about not being able to conceive, however….

My husband and I have been together for six years. Prior to dating, he knew my ex and was aware that I never planned on having children and that this was a reason why my prior relationship ended. My husband also has been very clear about not wanting children. Does my mother-in-law respect this? No. Does she believe me when I say that WE made this decision together not to have children? No.

For years now, I have been disrespected and questioned by my mother-in-law’s family. Literally every time I have to spend time with them, I hear the following questions/statements: “When are you going to change your mind?” “What’s wrong with you?” “What are you going to have when you don’t have your career anymore?” Blah blah blah.

I have removed myself from group chats, I have asked politely to not talk about our choice not to have children, etc. Anyway, my husband made me get lunch with my mother-in-law, her husband, my sister-in-law, her children, and her fiancé. They told us lunch was at noon. Did my mother-in-law and her husband show up super late as normal?

Yes. They didn’t show up until 1:20. My sister-in-law and her family didn’t show up until 1:40, even though we told them we needed to leave at 2 pm as we had another commitment. So, I’m already fuming because well, they suck. Within two minutes of sitting down, my mother-in-law and her husband have the nerve to bother me about kids again. I ignored this comment…at first.

My mother-in-law then said something to me again when my husband was holding our niece. Without hesitation, I blurted, “Well, that’s going to be hard to do since he had a vasectomy four weeks ago.” Not realizing how loud I was, pretty much the whole restaurant turned around and stared at me. My mother-in-law and her husband stared at me as if I had just reached over and punctured my husband with my dinner knife.

My mother-in-law literally started tearing up, making it about her. Lunch was shortly over after this and we haven’t heard from her since. No regrets.

scentsyjunkie

43. The Devil’s In The Details

At the beginning of this month, my significant other told his mom that we weren’t coming to Christmas. She was angry and argued, so he hung up. Last week she texted him: “Everyone is coming and dinner is at 6 pm. Please be early!” Him: “We’re not going.” She called him and screamed that he can’t change plans last minute.

All he said is that we never did and hung up again. Cue a flurry of texts that he promptly ignored. But that wasn’t even close to the end of it. Today she texted me: “Bring the deviled eggs, everyone is expecting them. Love you!” Ha, I’ve never made deviled eggs in my life. I told my partner and he texted his mom: “Again, for the third time, we’re not coming. We’ll send presents through the mail.”

MIL: “You’re disappointing everyone, you’ve clearly shown that you don’t care about your family and your niece’s first Christmas.” He didn’t respond so she then texted him later: “If you’re not coming have [me] drop off the deviled eggs.” He didn’t respond again. I’m not driving two hours there and back for your deviled eggs. Kiss my butt, crazy lady.

rumchataplease

44. Face The Music

Basically, my mother-in-law and her sisters like to play this really raunchy song at every wedding they go to. Apparently, they’ve never been told no. Until now. I told my DJ that my mother-in-law and her sisters were not allowed to request songs, and then my husband came in and flat out banned the specific song. About halfway through the dance, though, they run up to the DJ booth and request the song.

Obviously he tells them no, so they come over to me and demand to know why I banned the song. I told them it wasn’t appropriate to play around kids, or my extremely religious grandmother, and they became livid. I ended up telling them I wasn’t going to argue at my wedding, and that if it was really that big of a deal we could fight about it in the morning.

Now, for the past week I’ve been getting texts about how horrible I am for what I did. I ended up telling them today that if they texted me again and the text didn’t include an apology, that they wouldn’t be welcome in our home again. I haven’t heard from any of them since, nor has my husband. Man, this isn’t the first issue I’ve had with her and I can tell it certainly won’t be the last!

bananabodyoil

45. You’re Not Welcome

My son is 4.5 weeks old. Immediate problems with my mother-in-law started mid-pregnancy. My wife and I had been trying to have kids for a while (two miscarriages last year). Needless to say, this pregnancy had been planned out from the start. Part of the plans were of course the delivery itself. My wife did not want anyone but me and her friend/photographer in there during the delivery.

The rest of the family would be given updates and allowed in after we had spent some bonding time with our son. It’s worth pointing out that the last part is hospital policy regardless, which we didn’t know at the time. We didn’t want people waiting in the lobby because I was not going to be out there dealing with their emotions and needs during the whole ordeal.

My singular concern was to be there with my wife and child. We had been telling friends and family this from an early stage of the pregnancy. Every single person we told had all unanimously said, “Okay, no problem.” Because why should it be a problem? Everybody, that is, except my mother-in-law. She would always say, “No, I’m going to be there, you can’t keep me away.”

We would resist, but as time went on it started becoming more and more heated. Mind you, this woman has a lifelong history of being controlling towards her children, so this isn’t new territory. The week my wife was due, it ramped up a notch. It all turned into actual arguments and all-out hostility. She began calling me a “sperm donor,” claiming this was all my attempt to shut her out, etc.

We started getting screenshots of messages from family members where she had started a complete smear campaign against me and was trying to turn her entire family against me. Even more confusingly, she had tried that with my own mother. So my wife ends up giving birth late at night with a surprise c-section, while our son ends up in the NICU for a couple of hours.

My wife was out of it, and I was trying to bounce between her and our son, all the while my mother-in-law was apparently going berserk because we weren’t dealing with her needs. Next thing we know, she shows up at the hospital in the middle of the night causing a scene. Security rightly stopped her at the entrance and didn’t allow her up.

My son and I had finally been reunited with my wife about 20 minutes prior to this. The hospital, as mentioned, doesn’t even allow calm rational visitors within this time. Let alone lunatics in the middle of the night ranting and raving in the ER lobby. So of course this was, once again, my fault. I set up the hospital regulations. Silly me.

It’s important to note that my wife had tried at every step to mitigate this disaster. Even so much as trying to talk her mother down WHILE SHE WAS IN LABOR, telling her to come around 8:00 in the morning so that she can bring her boyfriend and son. Not “Come back when I’ve finally rested from being in labor all night.” Just “come at a reasonable time with the rest of your family.”

So the attacks continued. We had a local private detective come in and we tried to get a restraining order, but the hospital is in a different county than where we live. They suggested contacting the PD where we live when we leave the hospital. You bet I called them within the hour of being home, but that department said they couldn’t do anything unless she actually broke the law.

But we’ve at least begun building a paper trail. One incident with hospital security, once with first PD, one with our local PD. Since then, we have had further attacks on our character, which my wife has fought back on as much as possible. All of these decisions were hers from the beginning and she has tried to correct my mother-in-law’s version wherever possible, yet the mother-in-law still uses it as an easy attack against me.

She has still not seen my son, and is currently not welcome around him. She will go behind bars if she so much as tries to come around my son at this stage. There have been enough written notices and contacts with law enforcement to give us the paper trail. After witnessing her mistreat her children for years, I will never let her around my child so long as she continues to act this way.

She will certainly never watch my child. There will be no unsupervised visits. I have zero regrets that she has never met her grandson. He has had so much quality time with his extended family. Everybody else has been so happy to meet him, and he is a very happy baby. He is missing nothing.

WillCodeForFalafel

46. I’m The Mom Now

I bought brand new furniture and it was delivered today. After I put all the decor around the place, I cracked a cold one and sat in one of the nice chairs, put my feet up on the table, and relaxed. Suddenly, my mother-in-law says, “Did your mother teach you to put your feet on the table?” I said, “It’s my furniture and I’m the mom now.”

customerservice_28

47. For Love Or Money

Today my mother-in-law offered us $500 to rename our daughter that will be born in July. She doesn’t like the name we want to give her and said the $500 would be to pick a mutually agreed-upon name. I told her where to shove it and it’s not her kid.

JPike05

48. A Parting Gift

This morning I got a call from a funeral home letting me know that my mother-in-law’s body had been picked up, and they wanted to discuss the obituary as well as inquire about payment. There was just one problem. My mother-in-law is still very much alive and she certainly wouldn’t have been sent to a funeral home four or five hours away from where she lives if she wasn’t.

I tell them they have the wrong number, even though they used my maiden name—I have an extremely rare maiden name—and I previously lived in that town. The young man on the phone was apologetic and wished me a good day. Not even five minutes later, the number calls me again. This time it’s a woman asking me if I was the daughter-in-law of my ex mother-in-law.

I said, “Not in the last 10 years.” Turns out, my witch of an ex-mother-in-law, who honestly was a practicing witch but also just a witch of a woman, had known she was dying. So she decided to get a bizarre revenge. As one final “screw you,” she thought she would try to stick me with her funeral costs. Of course there’s no legal recourse here, even though our state has that weird law where you legally have to take care of your parents if they aren’t able to themselves.

But she’s not my mother and I was never legally married to her son thanks to his shady officiant friend not filing our marriage license. From what I can gather, she pre-planned her funeral and told the funeral home that I was currently her daughter-in-law (again, I’m not) and would be covering all funeral costs. They apparently believed her, probably because she plays the victim so easily, and thought I helped her make the plans.

This is exactly what she did when I lived with her and my ex. I busted my butt working full time while she did nothing but spend all of her money at thrift stores and he worked 15-20 hours a week minimum wage. Now they’re holding a body and have no idea what to do with it as they don’t have contact information for my ex, and nor do I. I suggested they call the nursing home. But yeah, happy Friday to me.

ItsKaragan

49. One Gifted Lady

My fiancé’s mother is a single mother, and she is waayyy overly attached to my fiancé. She seems to think she is entitled to be a part of every aspect of my fiancé’s life and that she must always come first in all situations. For example, she was livid when we got engaged because we didn’t visit her first after the proposal. She pitched a fit that we had stopped by my parents’ first to show them the ring.

When we did arrive at her house, she was so angry that she ended up throwing a cake at us in her driveway. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. She has made my life a nightmare since we got together, but it became much worse when I got pregnant. She has made numerous attempts to convince my fiancé to leave me because she doesn’t believe I am pregnant with his baby.

Her “proof” is that I was too fat, so I must be lying about the due date. This is just one of the many things she has done to hurt and embarrass me. We have limited our contact with her as a result, but she always seems to find a way to weasel back in. So, last week I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. Both our families were not able to come to the hospital and will likely not be able to visit in person for a while.

My parents told me they planned to decorate the front of my house to welcome the baby home, and my mom said she had ordered a bunch of things off Etsy for the occasion. When I arrived home, I was surprised to see that there were no decorations. I didn’t think much of it and just assumed my family had run out of time. It wasn’t like them to forget, but I assumed there was a good explanation. Then I got a heart-stopping phone call.

My mom called me after I was settled and asked me how I liked the decorations and presents. I asked her what she was talking about and told her that there was nothing outside when I got home. My mom proceeded to text me several pictures of my house fully decorated in pink baby gear. I also noticed several wrapped presents on my porch in the picture.

They were also missing along with a large banner, balloon arrangements, and several other decorations. My mother told me one of the presents contained a little sweater knitted by my grandma that I wore as a baby. I had been looking forward to receiving this and passing it on to my daughter. I was extremely confused as we live in a rural area so porch pirates are not very common.

I asked my fiancé to check our security camera. He pulled up the footage and we were both shocked at what we saw. We saw his mother taking everything down and putting it all in her car. The footage was very clear and you can easily see her license plate in the video. My fiancé was livid and immediately called his mother. She tried to deny it at first but soon admitted what she had done.

She claimed she was angry that she was not given the opportunity to decorate our house herself. She said my family had insulted her by excluding her, and she began to cry about how horrible we are to her. My fiancé was not having it. He said she had one hour to bring everything back to our place or he would be calling the authorities.

She then laughed and said that she had already thrown everything into a donation bin and told us good luck finding it. My fiancé has already driven around to several donation bins in the area to check but hasn’t found anything yet. We now agree that she will have no contact with our child in the future. I am beyond done with her and I just hope this is all over.

RedSky988

50. Walk It Off

So, I can’t walk very long distances, can’t climb stairs at all, and am mostly in my wheelchair. However, my mother-in-law doesn’t believe I need my wheelchair. The following is a part of a conversation I had with her. MIL: Can you walk? Me: Yes, depending on how far I have to walk and how I’m feeling that day. MIL: So you can walk. Then what’s up with the wheelchair?

It was my birthday last week, and she decided to throw me a party…on the deck of her house that’s currently under renovation. We get there, and the front of her house is all torn up. There’s no walkway, there’s cement and rocks everywhere. It was all blocking the front door. Basically, even if you weren’t in a wheelchair you wouldn’t have been able to get into the house through the front door.

According to my mother-in-law, that wasn’t a problem! Since the party was on the deck and you don’t need to go through the house to get to the deck, all you need to do is go to the backyard and climb the stairs on to the deck. Easy right? Not. By the way, she had not told anyone that her house was under renovation, so we were all taken aback.

When my husband and I get to the backyard, my mother-in-law and my husband’s siblings were all on the deck having food and drinks. There was no feasible way for me to get up there unless I was carried. I was ready to leave until my brothers-in-law started clearing the tables and chairs and bringing them down onto the grass. At this point, my mother-in-law was having a fit—”That’s my deck furniture!” or “It’ll get grass stains!”

In the end, they all effectively moved the stuff down. She was grumbling but put on a nice face for the rest of the party. Later on, I heard her complaining about why I didn’t just climb the stairs since I could walk. She just doesn’t get that a person can walk AND need a wheelchair at the same time. So, that basically sums up what a disaster that day was.

Prudent_Ferret2

51. Thou Shall Not Covet

This incident happened exactly one year ago today. My wife and I are in therapy, not so much because of issues we have in our marriage but because both of us have horrible families, and neither of us until meeting our therapist had strong spines about it. We are very low contact with my mother-in-law. She more sucks than is horrible but she also has some substance issues she’s dealing with, namely an addiction to pain medication.

Anyway, let’s go back a year and a few days. My wife is due any second with our first child. So the plan was to have both sets of parents at the hospital after the baby arrived and my wife and I had time to bond. Her parents accepted that, my dad who is an enabler was okay with that, but my mom was not. She demanded she be at the hospital earlier, and we told her no, she had to wait.

Finally, she said OK after she saw we weren’t budging. So the baby was born. It’s a boy, and we hadn’t found out so it was a big surprise. Anyway, both sets of parents come, everything’s good. Until suddenly, it took a dark turn. My wife was getting tired so I walk my parents out; hers had already gone home. My dad went out to get the car while I waited by the front door with my mom.

She then turns to me and says that my dad and her are filing for custody of the baby. Before I can speak, she claims my wife is on drugs like her mom (my wife doesn’t even drink) and that she saw how my wife was around the baby and she fears for his safety. I’m stunned. My dad pulls up and she gets in and leaves. I go back upstairs and my wife sees my face and knows something is up.

I really don’t want to tell her but I’m not going to lie to her, either. She’s as upset as I am, so I text my mom that she’s not to contact us anymore. I then block her number. At this point, my younger sister is blowing my phone up and I know it’s my mom. We go home the next day, and my wife had tearing and therefore needs medication.

She refuses pain medications because of her family history but says she will take Advil. So I go get some things at CVS, she and baby are sleeping (him in his cot) at home. I’m in line getting us dinner when my wife calls me sobbing. She woke up and there’s no baby. I run home and we are both a mess at this time. Then my neighbor comes over and asks what’s going on.

She sees me running like my feet are on fire, so I tell her. She tells me, “Wait, so your parents weren’t supposed to take the baby?” Yep, my mom came and kidnapped my baby. I immediately call the sheriff’s office, since my best friend is a deputy there. As soon as I tell him and his partner what happened, they head to get our baby.

Turns out my dad wasn’t involved in the actual kidnapping, although I’m sure he knew about it. My mom knew at the time where we kept a spare key and let herself in. We went all the way and pressed charges. According to my friend, they had a nursery waiting at their house. Our baby was returned to us. My mom was sentenced, but because of her standing in the community she was only given a slap on the wrist.

However, the negative attention she got after that event spurred her and my dad to move. Thankfully, my sister turned 18 before then and she stayed with us a few months before going a few states away to school. For a long time, both my mom and my dad were radio silent. However, my mom has tried to reach out in the last few months.

Thankfully we’ve learned from this. We now have cameras, a security system, and no spare key outside. Our neighbor, who is now a great friend, has our spare. We are three months along with our second child, and I’m hoping my mom doesn’t find out about it until long after.

not2daysatan90