Broken Base: The comment section in this story. The submitter's mother writes a post about 'they' being the incorrect pronoun to use for singular cases, and 'it' should be used instead. note She mentions that she was talking about language and grammar correctness, not about transgender pronouns. The submitter disagrees in their reply to the mother's post, and proceeds to call and visit the mother over the next few days to talk about the topic. Some of the comments believe the mother was absolutely horrible and the submitter should have been glad to get such a toxic person out of their life, while others point out that the submitter was the horrible one for repeatedly bringing up the topic and flat-out harassing their mother about it.
This mother, guilt-tripping the cashier about her grief (about which the cashier had no way of knowing), just to punish the cashier for making small talk.
This submitter treats their toddler brother being focused on his food — tightly gripping a pack of chips while asleep, taking food off of an aunt's plate, or flat-out prying 'his' chip out of her mouth to eat it himself — as funny and cute moments. Comments points out that this is disgusting behavior, and worry about this unhealthy obsession with food. Doesn't help that the family has an overall rule that any food left unattended is fair game, which is very likely to be how this behavior developed.
This family is just awful to one member of the family, an aunt who has mental illnesses and stays at a mental hospital, using terms like "crazy" and "mental asylum". Many comments point out how stigmatizing the family sounds. It's especially apparent in the fact that OP had a nice conversation with her, pointing out that the "crazy" aunt does not deserve any of it.
This dry-cleaning business owner has an unpleasant customer, who also happens to be their neighbor, and the submitter explained to their young son that the neighbor was Shrek (now living alone, and transformed as a human), to make sure the son stops being afraid of the noisy neighbor. One day, the child asks the neighbor “Hey, Mister Shrek, where are you going? Were you really an ogre?”, and the mortified submitter scolds their son and spanks him "to teach him" even though the poor kid was only acting on what the submitter told him. The comments are almost unanimously against the submitter. Even the editors seemed to agree that the submitter stepped too far, as they added a Content Warning for abuse to the top of the story.
Comment from user heymoe2001: Teach him what? That you blame others for your own actions? Congrats! You taught your kid that you are unfair and a liar. Perhaps that adults cannot be trusted.
This mother wants to have some alone time to do things outside on Mother's Day, with her husband asking her to tell him before she leaves as he'll look after their kids. She spends an hour researching things before planning to leave, then finds her husband asleep in the recliner and the kids needing attention. She let her 'me time' go to care for the kids. Many comments cite that the submitter sounds like she's pulling a martyr and that she could have at least attempted to wake her husband up, so he could take care of the kids and she leave as planned.
This family's father apparently has a really funny scream when he's in pain, so his family often does minor things like poke, pinch or tickle him to hear that, even when he tells them to stop. He eventually comes around and says that his scream apparently is very funny because his screaming while at a chiropractor's office was heard and the nurses were laughing at the sound. The comments rip the OP and their family to shreds, pointing out how disgusting it is to tease the father over his pain reaction, and that continuing despite him telling them to stop is abusive.
This mother is treated as unreasonable for not listening to the OP's request to just power-cycle the router to fix a connection issue. However, the connection failures are stated to have been happening several times a week, indicating a more deep-rooted issue that a simple reboot can't fix. This makes the mother's reluctance to perform a treatment just to fix a symptom more understandable.
This boss keeps getting called by his brother over nothing, using him as a person to vent to and otherwise keep getting into horrible arguments. When the latest was so bad that the boss refused to take a call from the brother, customers shame the guy and he takes the call, learning that his brother was in a bad accident. The comments mostly point out that these customers were putting their noses into business that wasn't theirs, and that cutting toxic people out of your life, even if it's family, sometimes is the better option.
This submitter had baked goods disappearing from their home over the course of several months, despite some of them not being intended for her family. She suspects an aunt of hers and throws a garden party, but leaves a container of nutbread — with the aunt in question being intolerant to nuts, which give her migraines when eaten — on the counter. Later checking, and the submitter's mother talking to the aunt, reveals that she apparently did eat the bread because she had a migraine the last time she ate it. Many comments are appalled that the submitter would create this sting operation by using something to which they knew someone in their family would have a negative, physical reaction.
One (now-deleted) anecdote depicted a little girl as a Bratty Half-Pint when she refuses to ride her bike without training wheels due to having multiple accidents the first several times she tries, to the point that she prefers to ride her old child tricycle or sliding on a skateboard with her friends. However, her parent (the submitter) blatantly looked way worse than her: Instead of letting their daughter wait until she is a little older to try riding a two-wheeled bike or trying to help her get over her fear of hurting herself, they keep pushing the poor girl to ride the bike solely because all of her friends her age no longer have their training wheels. Soon enough it reaches the point where the parent hides the bike and tells the girl they sold her bike on Ebay in an attempt to get their daughter to change her mind (which doesn't work, she just sadly says: "Okay..." and goes right back to what she was doing), and when that doesn't work, the parent locks away the toy trike, training wheels, and skateboard so the daughter has no choice but to ride her bike on two wheels (which predictably causes the girl to throw a fit, all while the parent does nothing but tell their daughter to suck it up and ride the bike). The commenters near-unanimously sympathized with the little girl and reamed out the submitter for forcing her to do something that she was clearly not ready to do yet. The editors seemed to realize the commenters were right, as they later deleted the story from the site completely.
User Ganz: I'm guessing this whole bike fiasco was to make you look good and not actually provide any comfort or reassurance for your daughter. "Oh yes, my little angel is totally up to speed and is so talented, yada yada social parenting one-upping." Basically your daughter was scared of getting INJURED by trying to ride the bike and you said "too bad, do it anyways, you're making mommy look bad". WTF...
Hilarious in Hindsight: This story has a person discussing an Avengers fanfic in which all of the characters are transsexual or gay. When the writer says that this version of Hawkeye is asexual, someone else mentions his family. After the person explaining the story says they don't exist in it, the other person compares the writer to Thanos snapping characters they don't like out of existence. Avengers: Endgame came out the following year and revealed that Hawkeye's family were indeed victims of the "Snap".
. The submitter's mother writes a post about 'they' being the incorrect pronoun to use for singular cases, and 'it' should be used instead. note The submitter disagrees in their reply to the mother's post, and proceeds to call and visit the mother over the next few days to talk about the topic. Some of the comments believe the mother was absolutely horrible and the submitter should have been glad to get such a toxic person out of their life, while others point out that the submitter was the horrible one for repeatedly bringing up the topic and flat-out harassing their mother about it.