Ask Lemmy

My grandparents came to the US from Germany. Upon hearing my dad say black people that don’t like trumps (1.0) America should go back to Africa, i reminded him that most of them are way more American than we are. I could hear his brain break through the phone

yeah. the majority of stuff they'd say was like that, in fact. it's part of why i don't talk to them anymore lol

Yeah my dad has said so many things that have left me stunned. I have had to explain tax brackets to this man so many fucking times. He keeps thinking if he goes up a bracket the overall tax % will increase and therefore he will actually have less money.

My da told me "God does not forgive people who curse his name."

I asked "But God forgives people who sexually abuse kids?"

"If they ask for forgiveness, yes."

wHy DoNt YoU aTtEnD cHuRcH aNyMoRe??? lmao shut up.

I’m American: my dad told me a couple years ago that immigrants were “unclean.” I’m almost 40, and that was the first time he’d ever used that phrase. That’s probably the first time I realized how “mainstream” extremism had become, since he has virtually zero online presence.

I went on a trip to another country. Unfortunately, I had an accident (involving a fucking hurricane) that almost killed me.I had insurance so they covered all the medical expenses, including tickets and accomdations for one of my parents (aka: one of them could come free of charge). They decided that it was a good opportunity to visit the country since one was coming "for free" and they only had to pay for the other one.

Years later, my father told me that they are still paying the debt for the money they spent "because of me" when I had that accident so it was my fault they were in debt.

Just sitting and having a casual lunch with my dad at work. Sack lunches that my mom had made us! When he nonchalantly tells me that women aren't people and only exist for men's enjoyment. I basically completely froze out of shock as he spends the next half hour trying to use excerpts from the Bible to prove his point.

I haven't had a conversation with him since and that was nearly 20 years ago. Also realized that Christianity is not something I want to be associated with.

Funny thing is that he used to be adamant that god uses Parkinson's to punish only the worst sinners and he's got it now... Apparently there was some engine cleaning solvent my mom desperately tried to get him to stop using? The government banned it because it was giving people Parkinson's so he stocked up on it to prove my mom wrong...

Yes. My mom, unprompted one day, said:

"Did you guys know that Elon Musk's Dad owns an emerald mine?"

Followed by me saying "yes, did you also know he used slave labor in apartheid South Africa to build it?"

"Well I don't really care about any of that. I just thought it was cool."

I found out my parent's computer had a lot viruses because they are dumb and bought a McAffee subscription. I told them, they answered that they knew better than me, I replied that I had a degree in computer sciences, and my father laughed like the fucking idiot he is.

Let's say we don't talk about my job or computer anymore. Also I reduced the visits and phone calls that they had because I'm tired with their bullshit.

While writing my master thesis my professor suddenly left the university. Noone ever really knew why and there was no official statement other than a short sentence on the website that Prof. XYZ has left the department. My master thesis was on hold while I had to find a new professor. My mother, who has always accused me of being lazy and lying, insisted that it was all a lie. When I pointed out the news on the university website, she said: "I don't know how you hacked the website and got it to display your lies, but I'm not falling for your deceit." I am not a computer science major, I studied linguistics.

When I was little, I did something bad (I don't even remember what it was), and my mom got angry with me about it, and I was already crying, and I asked her "Do you still love me?" and she said "I don't know", and that shit has stuck with me forever and I'm sure contributes to the fact that I don't truly trust anyone. If I brought it up to her now, she'd 100% deny it.

The day my niece was born, my mom had asked me to wake her up so that she could be there after the birth.

Apparently, me actually doing what she asked me to do turned out to be a grave insult.

She ended up yelling and screaming at me, which triggered me, so I started yelling and screaming at her, and then she hit me with the only thing she could think of to actually hurt me.

See, from before I get into that, I've got to explain that from the time I was 15 until I graduated high school at 17, my mom and my stepdad essentially locked me in my room and only let me out for punishment, which was digging up stumps in the backyard or picking up a rock from one pile and hauling it to another pile, picking up a different rock from that pile, hauling that one to the third pile, back and forth. for eight to ten hours a day, And for going to school, just enough to prevent CPS from being called on them.

There was also a healthy dose of corporal punishment on top of that, being beaten for half an hour or longer for the smallest infraction.

It really messed with my head because I honestly thought like at some point they would come to their senses and realize how absurd the entire thing was and apologize and they never fucking did.

Anyway, now that we've got the groundwork in place, my mom decided she would say the thing that she could think of to hurt me, which was to tell me that her mother, my evil grandmother, had convinced her to do all of those things because otherwise no one would ever love me.

And why is it that otherwise no one would ever love me?

because I'm not white

My mom had shamed the entire family by marrying a Native American and giving birth to his child, And my grandmother, who is evil for multiple reasons, and I'll be glad to go into those, cause may she rot in piss, was a terrible person, had decided that the only way to cleanse the family of the stain of my existence was to psychologically induce my own mother into tormenting me in every single possible way she could.

And so every single time I think about all the opportunities I missed out on and all the times my mom wasn't there for me and all of the times that I was neglected and abused throughout my entire childhood, it all rolls back to my grandmother being a racist cunt, and my mother somehow not realizing that for what it was, and just being a good little flying monkey and doing whatever her mother told her to do with her own fucking child.

So yeah, I was abused because my grandmother is racist, and I didn't find out about that until I was 23 years old.

Back when Wicked, the musical, was brand new & the hot topic & it was just so so cool culturally speaking -- my high school choir was going to take a field trip day to go & watch it live in a big city. 🤩 Time off of school, going to this cool musical, it's a no-brainer. Right?

My parents told me I couldn't go because there was a 20-25% chance of snowfall. Combined with a significant 2+ hour commute, there was a chance I wouldn't make it back home by 6:40 PM on a Wednesday night, and that would cause me to miss the hour long 7 PM Wednesday night church services. 🥴🥴🥴🥴

Not even Sunday morning, most of everyone's day of rest. Wednesday. Night. Services. Couldn't even take a chance on missing that. That was...."special".... 🙄 Religious brainwashing at its finest!

I had moved away a few years and my mother was homeless due to her own choices and lack of effort to do anything. My wife and I were in town visiting her family, and we decided to take my mother out to dinner. During the meal she was (rightly) complaining about the perils of being homeless and having to watch out for the pigs. I suggested that she look into getting into some government housing. You know her response?

"I don't want to be the light in he dark."

If you're as confused as I pretended I was, she means she didn't want to live with/around black people. Which was really fucking surprising to me, considering we had lived with, around, and had been friends with all kinds of POC growing up (as you you tend to do in poor and mixed neighborhoods and when you have to rent out rooms to get by). That level of racism was rather surprising, but she had become toxic as fuck in the years before I moved, so it shouldn't have been.

My dad, the tech genius that he is, has been against every minor step forward since the 90's:

"Why do i need an answering machine, if they need me, they'll call back." He worked for himself as a handyman, so this is plain ridiculous. Finally, someone gives him an answering machine and suddenly it's "This is awesome! I never miss a call! I've got so much work!" Later it was "Why do I need a debit card? I can just write a check!" which evolved to "It's so convenient! I can get gas, even when they're closed!" He repeated the answering machine argument when cell phones arrived, and repeated the results when he finally got one.

It's a running theme in his life. The one that really gobsmacked me was when he proudly declared "the Internet can't hurt me if i don't get on it!"

Parent told me I shouldn't hold it against my older sibling who abused me when I was younger because the older sibling also remembered my birthday and got me toys when I was younger

My Dad's gone totally off the rails conspiracy theory nutty.

Fake moon landings, fluoride in the water is mind control, vaccines cause autism and maybe microchips and mind control again, foreign people are simultaneously lazy stealing benefits and stealing all the jobs, my god the racism. He fell into an echo chamber during COVID and hasn't come out again.

The best one was when I was telling him as a healthcare professional on the front lines watching patients and colleagues die that COVID was serious and we should take any opportunity to avoid it and make it better, he told me it was just flu and all fake news.

Yeah I don't talk to my parents much anymore.

I told my mom I'm suicidal, she told me she regretting giving birth to me for "being ungrateful", and now I'm even more suicidal and perhaps even a little homicidal.

My mother did the slitty eyed gesture and said that there were too many chi*ks here, in the car part for a large asian grocery store in the local chinatown that she had chosen to go to, to buy asian food. Yes other people heard and saw what she did, including asians. This was more than twenty years ago so not linked to the current rise of more overt racism.

I was talking to my father about the war in Palestine (my family and I are Jewish so its not unusual). I said "hey maybe peace is a better way of combatting terrorism", he responded that concentration camps should be built to combat terrorism and strip the Palestinians of their culture and identity.

"We shouldnt have accepted east germany. They just get out money." And that its their fault for getting a dictatorship

"I hit and abused you because i was overwhealmed because of you" (i have adhd and autism)

We dont talk. She doesnt understand why.

I'll forgive you if you come back to God. My crime was finally standing up to her abuse and her insane religious bullshit (at 16) and moving out (at 18). Conditional love, just like Jesus preached lol

Two weeks after I explained to my father why I had an abortion ... and he calmly said he understood my reasons ... he told me I'd murdered his grandchild.

He was a real winner, my dad.

My relationship with them was already in very thin ice due to repeated trust issues over the years, but what finally sealed it was my coming out to my dad and his response being "it's all because of this woke generation". Coming from someone who I thought had a very left leaning stance, therapy over the following years made me realize just how shitty and homophobic they really were. Turns out I'm probably more bi than gay (also ace), but it still stands.

As they got more and more out there on pre-MAGA conservative media, the unhinged hits just kept on coming. But probably the most unhinged was their belief that "90 percent of Black males are in a gang." Sad.

A few days ago my mom made a "joke" that clearly having good kids skipped a generation right after commenting about how well behaved my kids were.

With my own kids now I've been realizing how many of the "behaviors" my parents would complain about and expect me to improve upon were just normal kid stuff