When you're here you're family! Unless your family sucks like these peoples'! The folks in these stories share the time entitled family members ruined an event for everybody involved. Yikes.
Welp…That’s a Little Awkward
“My sister had her boyfriend over for Christmas for the first time. We had met him but he was still a fresh face to the family.
We played a charades-type game where everyone had to write down a famous person and then one person would draw from the famous names and act that person out.
I drew ‘Paul Gassle.’ I was stumped. I had no clue who this was. It ticked me off that someone would write a name in that wasn’t a famous person everyone would recognize. I couldn’t act anything out, and lost. Once the timer was up, I screamed out ‘Who the heck is Paul Gassle!?’
My sister’s boyfriend, admitting he was the one who wrote it down, said ‘That basketball player for the Lakers.’
‘PAUL GASOL?!’ I screamed.
His face went red and he looked so embarrassed. I felt terrible.
10 minutes later he got a phone call that his grandfather had died.
Good times.”
From Bridesmaid To Restraining Order
“My wedding.
Leading up to the wedding, my wife’s cousin gave us more drama and headache than anyone in my entire family has ever done. She was originally going to be in the bridal party, but she complained about not being the Maid of Honor. She tried scheming her way into the position and constantly belittled me and my family.
Eventually, I told her she wasn’t welcome at the wedding and she certainly wasn’t going to be in it. She showed up at the ceremony (thankfully, quite early) and my oldest brother (also best man) alerted me and asked me what I wanted to be done. I confronted her and told her to leave. She refused, so I called the police and had her removed from the property. After the honeymoon, we received phone calls in the middle of the night so she could tell us how horrible we were. But no! She didn’t stop there either.
I filed for a restraining order and now the cousin, her mom (my wife’s aunt), and an uncle that sided with the prick don’t talk to us. The aunt tried to hold a family meeting last year and didn’t want me involved. I showed up and when she said I wasn’t welcome in her house, my wife said ‘Then neither am I.’
I’ve heard through other people that, to this day (four years later), she’s still talking trash about us to everyone she sees.”
Stay Away From Cousin Marty
“Not a standard family gathering, but our entire extended family had gone to the hospital after my grandmother had a stroke. She was in bad shape and every relation within 100 miles came to wait. My cousin Marty was a known creep amongst all the kids. The kind of guy who would stare at us and more than once ‘accidentally’ left the door open when he was exposed. Threatened to hurt my mother once because my brother saw him creeping on some of the younger kids (I was the youngest but he was worse around the girls).
As we are preparing to leave, the police come by with Marty in handcuffs. Turns out he snuck off and violated a girl in a bathroom. Several family members threw fits about him being arrested when our grandmother was sick as if that gets you a pass for child violation. It was a super ugly scene as my white trash aunts scream at the cops instead of being ashamed about one of their kids dragging a little girl off.
Turns out he was a known pedo and the cops were pretty much waiting for him to get caught so they could nail him. Think he served about 15 years. Not really sure the full extent of the charges against him, but when he got out his mother brought him to visit my father. I wasn’t there but I called and said to get him out of the house before I got there. Pretty much lost my mind and drove about an hour to get there. Stormed into the house with a baseball bat in my hand, having just missed him.”
Are You Sure You Don’t Want To Name It After Me?
“This happened just a couple of months ago.
My wife is pregnant and we were a few months in. We had gone to the doctor to find out the gender and were throwing a family party to deliver the news. Her family is very well off and very large. I’m talking 50 people within a five block radius to her grandparents house. My side of the family is super small. Just my mom, step-father, and aunt come to the party. So I supplemented my side with some of our mutual couple friends.
About an hour into the party we had everyone go outside for the reveal. We prepared these poppers filled with confetti (either blue for male or pink for female) for the announcement. I thought it would be hilarious to make one filled with the opposite color but my wife said no. Anyways, everyone gets a popper, lines up on either side of the driveway 3-2-1 POP! Pink glitter and confetti fly in the air. Everyone is hootin’ and hollering in celebration. We start receiving congratulatory remarks from my friends and her family. I made the announcement that we had come up with a name.
Right after I said the name, my mother comes up to me and says, ‘Are you sure it’s not a boy?’
‘Yes, I’m very sure. The doctor confirmed it last weekend,’ I answer
A tear starts to roll down her cheek. ‘And y’all are firm on the name?’
‘We really like the name we picked out,’ I said.
‘What about my middle name, Jean’ she asked.
‘I’ll get with my wife but I think we are pretty set on the name we picked out,’ I repeat again.
She left shortly after that exchange without saying goodbye. Apparently right after the pop, she turned to my friend who had just gotten her PHD and asked how reliable those sonograms are at determining gender of the child.
She gave us the cold shoulder for the next three months and has a collection of boy names ready just in case three doctors and a handful of nurses are wrong about us having a baby girl in December.”
No Fighting At The Wedding
“Our worst family story happened at my aunt’s wedding. My aunt (a white lady) was marrying a Korean-American man whose parents really wanted him to marry a Korean woman. During their entire engagement, his parents would invite random Korean women over for dinner to try and sway him. Just completely disrespectful.
Eventually, they seemed to get over the fact that he was definitely going to be marrying this white woman who was going to be their daughter-in-law. On the wedding day, his parents seemed politely resigned to the situation. His father actually even danced with my aunt at the reception, so we were all relieved and hoped that things were changing for the better.
However after dancing, his father approached the mic, and we all expected him to give a toast about how my aunt was so great that he overcame his prejudices or something.
Instead, he approached the mic, loudly cleared his throat, and in his thick Korean accent said something so rude that I will never forget: ‘This… is abomination, like German Shepard mating with poodle.’
He then shook his head and went ‘Tsk, tsk,’ while wagging his finger.
My aunt ran out of the room crying, and my grandfather, now building over, casually walked up and punched the man right in the face in front of 200 wedding guests. There was an instant hush over the crowd, then followed by a slow clap. People cheered.”
She Couldn’t Even Get Uninvited If She Tired
“I’m the reason for the worst family gathering in my family.
My mom got remarried to a fairly nice man about seven years ago. She insisted I go to every holiday at his relative’s house, even though I would rather spend the time alone. They are nice enough for bigoted idiots but that’s about it really. They seriously believe that Obama is a terrorist, that he’s never saluted the American flag for some reason, and that democrats are actively plotting to take over the country. That kind of people. Nutjob stuff. Really fun.
About two years in I decided I couldn’t take it anymore. I think up a plan to do my best to convince my mom that it’s not worth the effort forcing me. I’m going to get, god forbid, uninvited from this shindig because my time is too valuable.
Easter comes around and during dinner, they start the crazy political talk. This time, instead of quietly hanging back rolling my eyes, I joined in. I’m not arguing, I’m agreeing. I’m taking their own comments and then taking it one step further. Obama is not just a Muslim terrorist, he’s a secret plant that’s in the White House to bring us down from within. I’m the Ann Coulter of dinner parties. My mom becomes more and more alarmed and starts making gestures indicating that she may slit my throat soon. She turns an alarming shade of red, so I back off.
Thanksgiving comes, and I realize I need a more drastic plan. I decided that I will hit on my younger step-family member (he’s 21) in hopes of having a valid excuse why I can never come over again. This plan fails mightily when I open up a conversation as to what he is majoring in. He tells me he wants to be an architect, but he’s still in Math 101, which is basically pre-algebra. He follows it up with, ‘I don’t know why math is such a big deal, it’s not like I really need it.’
He didn’t know why he needed maths to be an architect.
I gave up completely at this point and spent the rest of the day texting on my phone.
I steeled myself for Christmas, only to be informed that I was uninvited because they felt I was terribly rude to be texting when everyone was watching football.”
Playing For Keeps
“There was a small fight in my family that basically severed all deep emotional ties that my brother and I had for my grandmother.
We have a cousin once removed who is the last ‘baby’ in the family. Ever since he was born, our grandmother has clearly treated him as the favorite. She would buy him thousands of dollars worth of presents at Christmas time while we would get $20. Were we jealous? A little, but I think we were just sort of thinking how ridiculous it was because when we were young, we never had that much money spent on us. Anyway fast forward nine or so years and the second cousin is obviously spoiled and usually bratty.
I think it might have been Thanksgiving, but we were at my aunt’s house and my brother and I were in the living room watching football and everyone else was in the kitchen/dining room. The second cousin enters and just starts staying stuff to get a rise out of us. He started talking about sports and how he was capable of liking two football teams. My brother and I tried to explain ‘fanhood’ to him and he went into the kitchen and dining room and told everyone in there that my brother had called him ‘stupid.’
Well, things hit the fan alright! My grandmother heard the commotion and went ballistic ‘You called a 9-year-old stupid?’ she shouted. ‘No!’ my brother responded, ‘We’re saying that he is lying.’
‘Oh, so you’re calling him a liar!?’ She shot back and stormed off with him and left. My grandmother yells that we are ‘Disgusting and immature for picking on him.’ Royally ticked off, we basically let it rip and said everything that had been on our chests for the past few years; about how it was ridiculous how much he was spoiled and how she was trying to buy his love.
Don’t talk much to my grandmother anymore. My brother and I have not received any cards from her since the incident. When I came home last summer (the first time I had been back in three years) she just sort of looked at me, wasn’t happy or excited at all. I got $5 from her on my birthday which I found both hilarious and insulting. I just keep that $5 bill in my desk drawer as a reminder of her stinginess. The pot was bound to boil over. I just wouldn’t have thought it would’ve been over sports. Whatever.
Yeah, we play for keeps.”
The Shopping Bag Incident
“My father is one of four kids. His brother, my uncle, is married to the cheapest woman alive. She had an older brother who died young, leaving two small children. When her wealthy parents died, she contested their will and managed to keep their entire fortune for herself (she is worth a few million as a result). Her brother’s kids got nothing, and she is rather proud of that. ‘I only wanted what I was entitled to.’
If you visit her house, my aunt will not lift a finger. She won’t make food or play hostess or do anything at all. She wants compliments for ‘keeping the family in touch’ but won’t spend a dime to feed the 10+ people SHE INVITED OVER. We’ve learned over the years to treat events at her house like a potluck – we all bring food to share now, paper plates (washing dishes costs money, so she doesn’t want to use her own dishes), and plastic silverware. She’s even complained about people flushing too often (more water wasting) and using too much toilet paper during these visits. Last time, my contribution was a four-pack of Charmin double rolls. I was always taught that if you invite guests over, you feed them and make them feel welcome.
When I was in grad school, the extended family met at my grandmother’s to celebrate the holidays. My aunt had the nerve to ask my 90-year-old grandmother for gas money! My grandmother gave her a $20, and then offered me money. I told her that I could always afford to come to see her, making sure my aunt heard me loud and clear.
The shopping bag incident. One Christmas, she brought gifts to my grandmother in a reusable shopping bag. You know, those bags you can buy at Whole Foods or any grocery store for about a $1. Apparently, in the chaos, the bag got misplaced. My aunt continued to badger, harass, pester, and beleaguer EVERYONE nonstop about her bag. She wanted that dang bag back and she would not let up about it for about four hours. Finally, my other aunt gave her $5 to shut up about it. To this day, I hate those shopping bags.”
The Legend of Vacuum Cleaner Boy
‘As unbelievable as it sounds, this actually happened, and this was given an honorable mention in the Darwin Awards as a personal account about 15 years ago.
This happened shortly before that time, when I was away at college, but was a weekend get together with my immediate family. I’m from a decently-sized family (I’m one of five boys and one girl. I’m boy number three, with the youngest sister), this happened at my parents’ house.
Paul, the one in line after me, is…well…special. He’s actually in jail right now for armed robbery. He’s done his share of stupid things, like sliced his finger off (was reattached) when trying to cut a frozen chocolate Easter bunny with a steak knife around the age of seven. He’s stood in puddles while playing with electricity and been knocked out. He was on a first-name basis with the local ER, to the point that if he did something, he might just walk the mile to the hospital and wait for his name to be called.
So, the family got together at my parents’ house, and Paul had just come home from work. He sits on the back porch with us and was complaining to whoever would listen to him about the stresses of being a stucco worker. Pretty sure he was coked up at the time.
Neil, the next after Paul, used to bring strays home all the time. He had brought a dog home from who-knows-where, and in the middle of Paul’s rant, he noticed a pile of dog poo on the floor. As soon as he sees the poo, he jumps up and says, ‘God dammit! Neil brings home these stupid animals home, and I gotta take care of the mess!’ Nobody noticed this before, so that stray must have done the deed not a few minutes prior.
So Paul ran into the house, and a few minutes later comes out with the vacuum cleaner (important note: the porch was the area between the pool deck and the house, and was separated from the pool by a screen; it had outdoor carpeting), and after I told him that that’s NOT how you clean dog poo, he tells me to shut up, and starts to run the vacuum over the dog poo, streaking the carpet.
After the poo is either in the cleaner or mashed down into the carpet, Paul decides to go in the house and get a rag and some bleach and begin to start scrubbing the carpet.
Now there’s a nice little bleached patched on the carpet. So, Paul’s next great idea was to get a marker and color back in the discolored patches. The carpet is a mixture of teal and grey, so Paul found a bluish marker and started touching the carpet back up. It was, surprisingly, a good effort. Mom and dad weren’t watching, so I’m just looking with disbelief and amusement.
Now that all these issues are averted, Paul had one more task: how do you get the dog poo out of the vacuum brushes? Paul had a solution. I figured it was time to tell him to stop when he fired up the vacuum and started to lower the spinning brushes into the swimming pool to rinse them off. I said, ‘whoa, Paul, think about this. You’re about to put an electrical appliance into water.’
Paul scoffed and told me to shut up, that he knows what he’s doing.
So, since I have pretty much decided years prior that my brother was going to die doing something stupid, I just watched quietly. As soon as he touches the cleaner to the water, the thing gives him a good shock, causing him to drop the vacuum into the pool. What really surprised me is that the circuit breaker didn’t cut off, allowing the thing to roll along the bottom of the pool like a dang creepy crawler.
Paul reaches into the pool to pull it out, and as soon as he touches it, it shocks him again (these seem to be small jolts, because he’s reacting like someone pricked him with a pin).
After he can’t figure out how to get the gurgling vacuum out of the pool, he has an epiphany. ‘Oh, man, I’m so stupid! The hand I’m using has cracks in the callouses that lets the electricity go straight into my bloodstream. I’ll use the other one!’
After a few more shocks, Paul just decides ‘Forget this, I’m going to play through the pain and get it out!’ He succeeds, chucking the soaked cleaner into the grass. THEN he unplugs it. He rolls up the cord and puts the vacuum cleaner back in the closet. My oldest brother and I watched the whole pool incident go down with shock and awe.
The next morning, mom yelled at Neil to clean his room. Neil had the habit of vacuuming first, then picking up with his hands what wasn’t sucked up. So when the vacuum cleaner made a loud noise and blew out muddy dust all over his room, mom didn’t think twice in punishing Neil. The funniest part here was that Paul was woken up during the commotion, flung the door open and said, ‘dammit, Neil, you break everything!’ then slammed the door shut. Neil was punished, Paul, got away scott-free, yet again.
To this day, Paul’s nickname is Vacuum Cleaner Boy. Not very creative, but descriptive enough.’
This Family Has Issues Alright
“I was 10 and there was a family gathering at my aunt’s house with a bunch of people staying over at her house. We get called into the family room and all my aunts are looking at me. They started questioning me about my grandma’s clock and whether I was playing with it, which I did, so I said yes. Things turn ugly real quick, and it’s an all-out argument between my mom defending me and my aunts accusing me of breaking my Grandma’s $5 clock. They keep grilling me about whether I broke the clock, although it wasn’t broken, the batteries just fell out.
The fight drags out into the night, the hosting aunt brings out other instances of how I wasn’t behaving, like running my fingers through her carpet and drawing on her carpet with my finger. Eventually they accuse my dad of purposely breaking her sleeping bags. Me being 10 and not understanding what this fight is actually about made me feel guilty that maybe I caused this whole thing because I played with my grandma’s clock.
The hosting aunt eventually apologized to my mother months later, but it made things really awkward honestly a whole decade later. Even now things aren’t really the same. Years after the whole thing, I realized it wasn’t really even about me or the clock, it was about some other nonsense that I don’t really even understand, but my aunts used me as their point of attack. I even remember me saying ‘all this over a clock?’ when I was 10 during the fight. But one of my aunts insisted that ‘It was more than that’ implying that it was about how I was a horrible liar or something. You can’t make this stuff up.”
Lies, Fire, and Brimstone
“Well, it was a series of events, but it all came to a head at my grandfather’s funeral. However, I’ll attempt to make this as short as possible. So a number of years back my grandfather had a stroke (no one knew it was a stroke until a couple of years later) while he was refurbishing his ’32 Chevy, which he treated better than his family.
Eventually he starts to deteriorate and can no longer care for himself and my grandmother can no longer do it by herself. In comes my brother who closes down the business he just opened in order to be his full-time caregiver. I helped as much as I could, but I lived four hours away at the time and was finishing up college. Occasionally, his brothers and sister would come to visit, but for no more than 20 minutes before they had to scurry out the door for ‘important business’ all the while telling him how much they loved him.
Eventually he passes away in a peaceful manner surrounded by my family (I’m still away at this point) and reconciles with them for all the stuff he had put them through. In comes his siblings who (once again) shriek like banshees while mourning his death as if they had done everything to care for him which was farther from the truth. My grandfather full-on said I took care of him more often than they did and I was a full time student who lived four hours away.
Then comes the open casket viewing, where his family puts on a show for everyone to show their ‘love’ in a public setting. It’s a complete two-faced lie fest. Eventually things slow down and my grandmother thinks it would be nice to share our fond memories of him with those who have gathered to show their support, which we do. However, when my grandmother gets up to speak, my grandfather’s siblings begin to chatter amongst themselves and abruptly leave in the middle of her speech. Classless behavior. This was the last straw for my father who confronted them and told them they would no longer be able to carry his casket to lay him to rest.
The following day at the funeral things went eerily smooth, although they did the whole shrieking wails again for attention, but other than that it was peaceful. Then comes the final goodbyes before we lay our grandfather down to rest. All of the sisters thought it would be great to write a joint letter to my brother and grandmother who took care of him in his final days and ‘speak their minds.’
The gist of the letter was that we killed grandpa, neglected him and ignored him which led to his death. Also included was a jab at my nephew (who was only 2-years-old at the time) stating that if my brother cared for his son like he cared for my grandfather, he would have another tinier casket to deal with in the near future. They ended the letter telling us to repent of our sins and to ask God for forgiveness unless we wish to burn in damnation.
We don’t speak much anymore with that side of the family.”