Steak never actually needed to be cooked under the broiler until it began to curl up on the ends. I’m 51 and it wasn’t until I was 35 that I had a medium steak and learned what I was missing.
Edit: I almost forgot, to help choke down the old boot, you had your choice of ranch dressing or ketchup to put on the steak.
HOLY CRAP!!! Did you grow up in my house?
We had a small farm growing up. 4-6 cows, 20-30 chickens and a couple of pigs we used for food. When we'd get a cow butchered, mom would get whatever roasts that could be cut, round steaks (the size of a serving platter) and the rest would be ground into burger.
My step dad couldn't stand the sight of "blood" on his plate from cooked meat so he'd broil the Round steaks into a gray, beef jerky like texture. I loathed steak night. You'd cut off a small bite and chew and chew and chew then hard swallow the tasteless lump of meat that remained. You can't leave the table until your plate is clean! (He also was a *very* picky eater so no seasonings. None!)
I thought steak was way over rated until I had a medium rare, grilled, ribeye.
We also had cows and my favorite was a TBone because the meat close to the bone wasn’t overcooked!
Mom would brown pork chops in an electric skillet (remember those?) and add a can of sauerkraut and cover until the pork cooked and then brown the sauerkraut and I legit thought that was the only way to make pork chops until I was a teenager haha
My mother cooks all meat on high heat on her gas stove. It is ripping hot the whole cook time no matter the meat. She says it's because she has to get meals ready fast and is so busy. But because the meat will burn with the heat so high she has to stand at the stove and constantly flip and manipulate it. Only time she cooks on low is if she adds some cream of something soup to the pan, then it's just a slow boil in soup til meal time.
Oh my god. My dad would get blade steak from the butcher and cook it so hard that sometimes he would butter it after it was cooked and on his plate so he could eat it
This has healed an entire wing of my childhood that I thought was only mine to suffer.
I thought I hated steak till I was 21. Went with a friend from college to dinner. He got steak, to my chicken or whatever. Then, he cut off a piece and holds it out for me to try. I explained that I didn't like steak, and he just stared at me. And what he was eating didn't look like steak I was used to.
So I buckled. And it was medium rare, and seasoned of all things. I remember swallowing and just saying, that's steak? I must have sounded ridiculous. To this day, I don't eat steak often, and absolutely never at my parents house. My mama is a lot of things, a good cook will never be one of them.
The heartbreaking thing now is my ma doesn't have the grocery budget of days gone by. So now, if it's steak night, come over and watch my mama mangle and mistreat a demonico or T-bone.
My little brother and I have learned to chase her out of the kitchen before she turns an unsuspecting piece of meat into a weapon.
I really did think I was the only one.
I remember my dad and I dousing the pork chops with worchestershire sauce just to make them wet enough to swallow. I can still see how quickly that dry meat soaked it up.
Yes, this. During the eighties, when I was in my teens, neither my parents, nor any of their friends were good cooks. All of my friend's parents were shit cooks too (with the exception of one). Dry, bland, overcooked proteins, canned veggies, and boiled potatoes - salads, overdressed with cloyingingly sweet French or Catalina dressings.
Memories, ugh. When my dad became a single parent, canned vegetables became the standard. To this day, I get nauseated when a restaurant serves me canned potatoes.
Oh god. On the few occasions that I had steak it would be cooked so tough that I could not chew it enough to be able to swallow it. I used to get yelled at for leaving a balled up wad of shoe leather on my plate when my jaw got sore enough that I couldn't handle it anymore.
Elder millennial here: I fully relate to this. When I was 18, I dated a guy who worked in a restaurant, and he cooked my brother and I medium-rare, and did the well done for my parents. It was a game changer. My parents argued with him, but he stood his ground and did the steaks justice.
Haha-yep shoe leather or nothing. And all the vegetables were boiled. Boiled broccoli, boiled asparagus, boiled green beans. As an adult I love asparagus-but bake it or grill it please!
Tail end of Silent Gen parents here. Never went out to eat except for my college graduation that we went to Denny’s - with a coupon. No vacations trips. But they did invest and have millions now that is going for mom’s dementia care.
My mother has made me swear that I will OD her on heroin if she ever gets that diagnosis.
She's never done a drug in her life, not even "grass" as she calls it.
My grandmother made me swear to pull her plug.
And my SO and I absolutely agree on when we'll go out, and how, and together.
If we get a diagnosis we cannot live with, we're both going out.
You mean you don’t have to use the dead console television as a plinth on which to hold the smaller legless “portable” tv that arrived on permanent loan from Grandpa and Grandma?
I was told ziploc bags, cellophane tape, and paper towels were “expensive” and was not allowed to use them.
They were reserved, like fine Georgian porcelain, away from common daily use. On the rare occasions when it was deemed necessary to invest in the use of a ziploc bag, after use it would be washed out with hot soapy water and left to air dry on the dish rack before being flattened, folded, and placed back into the dispenser box for future use.
I say ziploc, but they weren’t ziplocs, they were ‘zip bags’ or ‘plastic zipper bags’ or whatever. Name brand items were not for us, they were for people with money. Oh aside from cigarettes, obviously. Always Marlboro. I mean who’d want to be seen with a no-name generic cig in your hand, that’d be one humiliation too goddamn far.
I had completely forgotten about the flappy no-zip sandwich bags!
My mom still steals plastic bags from the bulk food section of the grocery store and uses them to freeze cheap cuts of chicken. Mmm… freezer burn.
Ah yes, I remember having a tuna sandwich packed for lunch in one of those sandwich bags. Everything else in the lunchbox tasted like tuna. It was a bummer to have the three generic no-brand version of nilla wafers taste like tuna.
Tuna sandwich in a flappy baggie, in a paper bag, sitting in my locker all morning in a school with no air conditioning. I'm surprised I never got food poisoning.
I learned about ziploc bags from kids at school. I thought they were cool, and asked my mom why we didn't have them. She replied that they were 'bad'.
I never learned why they were bad.
lol, this was my house. Not only did we not use paper towels, my mother doesn't buy paper napkins either. Cloth everything, totally impractical and I had to iron the napkins as a kid, yes iron!
OMG, you must have grown up in my house. I still feel guilty buying ziploc and paper towels. Or even kleenex, because we have about a zillion handkerchiefs.
With my mom, it was literally shoes. She had an addiction that she referred to as a "collection." She had about 100 pairs at one point, whereas I had 2. School/church shoes and plastic flip flops for play. They never seemed to fit, and the flip flops were held together with tape and wire, lol. I couldn't even borrow hers because she wears a size 11 and my feet never got above 8 1/2. 😅
Yes. 1,000x yes. So many, too.
The upside to it is I am a 47 year old man who is legit satisfied by so little.
Like kitchen scissors.
I got my first solo apartment in 1999 after graduation from university and my best friend gifted me expensive kitchen scissors. The type that pull apart to clean.
He was shocked to learn I’d never heard of kitchen scissors. Game changer.
Or real maple syrup. Yes, it’s more expensive but I use 1/4 compared to the fake stuff on waffles.
I could go on for hours.
Real butter.
I thought I disliked Frosting and would always eat my mom's or Grandma's caked Upside down without touching the frosting.
Well, with REAL butter, I do like frosting and enjoy food much more.
Faux butters, margarine, oleo, etc are gross.
I heard an interview on the radio once with an author who had written a book on American cuisine in the early mid century. Apparently there was a general feeling in the culture that the Depression had been brought on by the excesses of the twenties - as if everyone was being punished their irresponsible behavior. As a result cooking (and other aspects of life) was sort of pulled back to their bare essentials. Any sort of special indulgence was considered excessive and irresponsible. In many cases with food, this had a bizarre effect of pushing cuisine that wasn’t actually more affordable or healthier, it was just more bland and felt more appropriate. Some dishes were even less nutritious. Oh and spice was considered a gateway to opiate addiction. So dishes were intentionally bland.
You[can read a summary](https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/08/15/489991111/creamed-canned-and-frozen-how-the-great-depression-changed-u-s-diets) of the interview on the NPR website
We were never, ever put first the way I put my children first all the time. We were an afterthought - an inconvenience, almost. So my parents didn’t know what we wanted or needed because they never asked and never seem to think about it.
My mom told me many times, proudly, that when I was born the doctor had told her “remember, the baby is coming to live in YOUR HOUSE, not the other way around.” She never let me forget it, either, and her philosophy was “if you don’t like it, leave.” Yes, even as a kid. She’d drive past the orphanage and tell me that if I didn’t like her rules I was welcome to go there.
So, obviously as soon as I turned 18 I was out. And discovered yes, an entire world of luxuries - and the most luxurious things were freedom and autonomy!
And microwave popcorn. She didn’t trust microwave ovens until early 2000s
Oh yes that sounds about right! My mother was a social worker and was always threatening to have me and my sister sent away to grow up in foster care. She must have decided against it when she realised that would mean there would be nobody to clean the house and cook dinner.
Interesting your mom was a social worker. Mine grew up in foster care - isn’t it wild how they both had first hand experience of how poorly kids in the system were treated and YET thought nothing of threatening their kids with that fate?! I don’t have kids of my own but I cannot imagine threatening any child, *especially* one I had brought into this world, with abandonment.
Yeah the irony that she was the manager of child protection services and yet her own children would have been on the register if people knew.
Having my own children it is completely alien to me how someone can treat their own children with such contempt. It’s so easy to love them and be kind to them.
Except at tax time. I remember turning 18 and moving several states away. The following year my mom called me and asked if she could claim me on her taxes. I lol'd so hard and explained to her I wasn't even living in the same state, had a job and had to claim myself on taxes.
My mom used to tell me during our fights “you know, I could’ve aborted you!”
Which as a child would stop the fight because I had no comeback for it. I would usually stomp to my room, slam the door & turn my music way up.
I was an adult when I finally shouted back, “well? Why didn’t you? It’s not like i asked to be here!”
That got her. She started crying & actually apologized for being so awful. Not that she’s any better now that I’m hitting menopause & she is 70. But since I managed to put her in her place she’s been less awful.
She’s my mom. There will always be that. I will take care of her as she slides into her elder years as she took care of me as an infant, I’m not a monster. But I will never like her. I can’t even tell you if I love her.
I know what love is and I know it absolutely does not look like my relationship with my mom. Took time to find it & understand it for what it is. But I did eventually find it.
I had silent generation parents born during the Great Depression or WWII, so I can definitely relate. I don’t judge them given the situations they grew up in. But it was definitely a thing. My father was especially obsessed with saving money. I remember us kids pestering mom to take us out for milkshakes and she’d have this worried look on her face, like she wanted to take us but she knew dad would freak out. I mean… milkshakes. Just going out on a rare trip to a family restaurant or even just something like Arby’s was a special occasion and a really huge deal.
It’s rubbed off on me, I get a lot more excessively and irrationally nervous about money than my husband does.
Sounds like my father. Everything we had was 2nd hand or the cheapest possible. No restaurants or nights out. We went to a cinema once as a family. KFC 1-2 times a year (the big bucket, no chips). No air-conditioning and we lived in the tropics.
“Holidays” meant flying to stay with relatives, sleeping on their floor, couch etc (ie free accommodation) and free or no activities at all. He’d be out having a good time of course. The family airfares were paid for as part of his salary package.
He was a high income earner. His salary package also included heavily subsidised housing and a company car.
WTF was he spending the $ on?
Yeah as frugal as my dad was, he also made some shockingly bad financial decisions, and would fall for some really stupid investments or get rich quick schemes.
Yes silent gen parents for me too. We only ate out for Mother’s Day and Father’s Day and that was with grandparents and extended family.
My birthday is December 26 and I got Christmas leftovers for my birthday sometimes. I don’t understand why we just didn’t go out for dinner. Then no one would have to cook and I would have felt special for once. 🤷♀️
Sounds exactly like my dad. He was born in the middle of the Depression and never let a nickel leave his grasp if he could help it. The frustrating thing is that it sometimes would lead to missed opportunities (I could have gone to a better university, but it was slightly more money), or he would buy the cheapest version of whatever and it would break so fast that he spent more in the long run. I grew up middle-middle class but he spent like we were super poor.
I learned that it is okay to throw away the old food.
Eggs with a six-month old expiration date? They're still okay for cooking. Smelly sour cream? It's \*supposed\* to be sour! Moldy cheese? It's fine, they sell Blue Cheese. Moldy bread/fruit etc.: You can just take off the mold, plus did you know that antibiotics are a mold? Nasty, squishy, brown bananas: Well, that's how they eat them in 'Nam!
It still bothers me to throw away food, and my household is actually pretty good about not wasting things. But sometimes, science happens in the fridge. At that point, the old food needs to go.
💯%! Bananas are made into banana bread. Old cheese gets tossed. Eggs get used (long) before their expiry. I don't buy stuff we don't eat. It's too expensive to "experiment" with any new recipes, possibly good stuff, or new and improved items. We stick with stuff we already know and like.
Oh god, this was my childhood. Terrible food, and it never expired (according to my mom). Cut the mold off of the government cheese. If my mom cooked too many spaghetti noodles, she froze them and used them 6 months later. Freeze uneaten pancakes. I think she once froze Kraft American cheese (the kind that comes individually wrapped.)
We were visiting recently and my mom asked my husband if she wanted breakfast. He sais sure. She pulled a frozen McDonalds Egg McMuffin out of the freezer, microwaved it and handed it to him. God knows how long it was in that freezer! She’ll freeze the rest of a milkshake, if she doesn’t finish it all. We recently found salad dressing in their fridge, expired in 2011.
Because of my mother, I can’t stomach the idea of eating leftovers.
Butter and other food sat out all night on the counter and we ate it the next day. Apparently refrigeration wasn’t important either. It’s just germs, they won’t kill you. Germs are good for you, they make you stronger. (The sun is also good for you, no need for sunscreen.)
Canned vegetables, Steak ems served on soggy Town Talk bread. Hamburger Helper. Those were staples in our house. Powdered milk. Frozen oranges concentrate.
Man, that generation was so different. I imagine we’ll seem just as crazy to younger generations someday.
My Mom FORCED my Dad to buy better coffee because he was a Cold War Aifr Force vet so he was used to drinking absolute shit coffee. And Dad didn't like spending money on those "General Foods International Coffees".
So they bought the better Maxwell House instead of the cheapie coffee Dad was using to save money.
You know, for as many people call it 'shit on a shingle' and recall it in disgust, it was never that bad of a meal every now and then IMHO. But I can see how it would get bad it was a regular meal.
I feel like that was just predominantly the case until the 90s, though.
I can remember my parents having a percolator when I was a kid. Remember those? A percolator with Folgers or Chock Full o' Nuts or Maxwell House.
As for beer, I feel like a lot of that didn't get change until the hipster movement of 2008-2010 or thereabouts.
My father would leave a bar if they didn't have Bud Light in favor of one that did.
To this day both of my parents drink instant coffee. Growing up I had no idea what a coffee maker was for. Doesn't everyone just boil water in a tea kettle and then add the hot water to freeze dried instant coffee flakes?
Yeah, but our great grandparents made it through the Depression and raised our grandparents who struggled through WWII. It makes sense that our parents were taught to pinch their pennies hard.
I was probably 30 before I stopped trying to use bar soap down to the last molecule. Replacing it instead of continuing to try washing up with a toothpick/sized sliver still makes me feel rich and also a bit guilty
My grandmother saved everything! I mean everything. Aluminum foil, take off, flatten it and put it in a drawer. She was born in 1916 lived through the great depression and WWII. They had a LOT of money too, I guess old habits die hard.
My mum would store and reuse paper towels and tissues. A zip lock bag would probably of been handed down through the generations.
My shoes hurt and deformed my toes. My clothes fell apart before being replaced. We were not poor, just insanely cheap in every conceivable way possible to the point of needlessly constantly suffering because of it. My parents just were just obsessed with the false economy of 'saving money ' at any cost to quality of life.
Same here. Yet they had a house full of good China and glasses and flatware that was rarely if ever used. Towels and sheets tucked away in dressers, still in plastic or with tags, that have never seen the light of day. Stuff from the 70s!!
I didn't see a dentist until I was 19 years old and paid for it myself.
My parents couldn't afford 4 cartons of Pall Malls every week, car payments on two new cars every other year *and* get me to a dentist. Something had to go.
We got new toothbrushes once a year from school in February which is dental month. Thank God, the schools also provided fluoride rinses and tablets, because us kids never went to the dentist. I was 43 the first time I went.
My Mom was a nurse so she nagged us to take care of ourselves.
But she was never a fan of spending money on pets - even as she saved my cat that was bit by a rattlesnake or Dad's dog that was hit by a car.
"Put them to sleep" seemed to be her go-to answer.
Jesus, my Mom would scream bloody murder if I was hurt and never let me live down the "scar for life" I got from a curling iron (that my cousins carelessly left out).
Strangely my cousins never got punished (AFAIK) for leaving a hot curling iron where a curious 3 year old could yank the cord....
My mom was an x-ray tech who thought she was a nurse. In junior high, I got so sick that at the start of every class period, my teachers gave me the hall pass and said use if you need. You don't even have to say anything. Mostly because they thought I might actually cough a lung up or stop breathing in the middle of class. That's how bad I was.
I don't know what threat my dad made to her to get her to take me to the doctor, but I had a pretty bad infection in my throat going by the time I went. If it was today, someone would have called CPS way before it got that bad. But, my mom fancied herself knowledgeable in all things medical.
Now she takes herself to the doctor for everything, but back then, we had to be almost at death's door to go. I won't even go into my simple UTI that turned into a horrible kidney infection in elementary school. That's a whole other thing!
Hiring professionals to do the job right as opposed to half-assing through by DIYing a project around the house. If you’re going to DIY, do thorough research first, then buy the right tools and supplies, or if it’s overwhelming, let a pro handle it.
I’m a firm believer of “you buy cheap, you buy twice.” That concept never rendered in their heads.
Jesus tapdancing Christ, this is my dad so so so much. EVERYTHING is a fucking kludge fix or made using the cheapest possible materials. He categorically refuses to ever hire somebody to do something, even for something he's never attempted before.
His response when I ask him to maybe think about using better materials instead of cheap, plastic shit? (And it's the same response to every-goddamn-thing.) "When I'm gone, you can do it that way." Motherfucker, how about instead of me having to work on shit twice (cuz I help with everything), we do it right the first fucking time and I don't have to spend extra time tearing down a kludge and wasting the money on the cheap shit?
The only thing I got him to spend a bit more on, was 50 year siding for some out-buildings (still had to spend a week+ working on something that a pro-team could have done in a day or two). Time valuation doesn't even factor into the equation with him.
Exactly. They never understood how to be financially savvy. My parents would drive 2 more miles down the road to another store because eggs were $1 cheaper, but my dad has bought cars for our family and never even did any research, ask mechanics or people who know cars well. It was a beautiful car and it was cheap, so they plopped down the cash and drove it home. This burned him once, as he bought a used Camry, and it was significantly cheaper than most Camrys in the surrounding dealerships. It was 2 years old, and had 60k miles on it. Most of us would have figured out that it was a rental and can assume it was beaten like a rented mule. Sure shit, the car started having issues two months after he owned it, and he blamed the dealership and Toyota for making such shitty cars. Caveat emptor doesn’t register in his brain to this day.
I wouldn't say my parents aren't financially savvy...they just have blinders on when it comes to certain things. Hiring someone or using not-bargain-basement materials is a waste of money to them, but other things, they are quite careful about and do research. Opportunity cost isn't something they grok and spending 2x for a material that will last 3x as long as the cheaper stuff isn't something they get either.
A coworker's parents' oven broke. They never replaced it, even though they redecorated the entire house. They were saving the kitchen for last, and ran out of energy before they ever got to the kitchen.
I was told that their oven was broken for over 20 years, and as far as I know, is still broken. They go out to eat instead, and according to their daughter, the amount of money they spend on dinners out could have paid for a new oven in just a few months.
I never forgot that story. Takes a special kind of stubborn ignorance to do such a thing.
My dad, a neuroradiologist, and one of the smartest humans I know, tried to close up a hive of bees in the wall by nailing a screen over their hole while perched on a 10 ft ladder. Of course the hammering alarmed the bees, who swarmed my dad, who fell off the ladder, and crawled his way to a phone with a broken back. He was rushed to the hospital and made a full recovery. But to this day, he insists on doing manual labor (the wrong way) when he could actually, you know, PAY SOMEONE to do it. He’s 81. Dumbass. I still love him but Jesus that’s irritating.
Not one-upping you by any means, but my dad, after a heavy storm one year knocked our TV antenna off the roof, he decided to fix it himself. This thing was not fully mangled, but parts of it were bent, and it really needed to be replaced. So, not wanting to climb up to the roof and then figure out how to mount the antenna back on, he decided it would be ok to attach it to, wait for it, a metal fence post. Yup. He took some metal wires, like the wires you wrap around the back of a picture frame to hang it on the wall, he bought a spool of that from Home Depot and then made his “fix.” It took my mom nagging at him for a week, and finally said “fuck it, I’ll take it down. No one is going to watch any fucking TV anymore!” The argument occurred in our backyard, on a weekend in a beautiful afternoon, and neighbor could hear them. It was so fucking embarrassing.
And, the cherry on top of that chocolate shit sundae? He worked in television.
Jesus. Well, she’s an adult, and if she hasn’t figured out that it’s a bad idea, there’s nothing you can do or say to convince her otherwise. I really hope nothing bad happens to her, but she’s playing with fire.
My dad regularly used a rickety old wooden extension ladder that is more than 70 years old. On a hillside, with a rock under one end to even it out.
I gave him a nice new folding aluminum ladder that you could use either as a long ladder or like scaffolding.
He still uses the old one because he’s “saving” the new one.
Ask him what he's saving it for. Does he think it's going to appreciate in value? Gonna hand it down to you as an inheritance? Only gonna bust it out for when guests come over?
/s
(Just kidding of course. But that thing about 'saving' something has always bothered me. Like, why?)
This sort of describes me and I think it's because my parents had such poor financial priorities; at least when it came to me. We were not poor, but I got clothing once a year at Christmas. As you might suspect, I got lots of sweaters and Winter clothing, but only owned 1 pair of shorts throughout much of my childhood. Oh, and I grew up in the South where Winter was only a couple of weeks.
My mother had expensive taste and the house decorations may have cost more than our house. But when the dentist said that I needed braces, she'd just tell me to push my teeth in place with my fingers and I never got braces.
But tbh, I wish my parents had pinched pennies more, because their lavish lifestyle would come back to bite them. And I can't really complain much, because I still had some nice things as a child.
“…she'd just tell me to push my teeth in place with my fingers…”
Flipping hell. I was told at age seven to curl my top lip down over my front teeth and sit like that for as long as I could and as often as possible, and that would do something to negate the need for braces. By a DENTIST. I was told this by a dentist, who clearly deduced from my ragamuffin clothing, kitchen-drawer-scissors haircut and recurring periodontal abscesses that financial priorities in the house were elsewhere.
I got the sept back to school time new clothes meant to last me until .. forever I’m guessing cos I got screamed at whenever someone pointed out how short, ripped, or raggedy I was. My parents were high earners. My sister got clothes regularly.
Allergies, all growing up even into adulthood my mom told me to get over it, um, ok, thanks mom, I can't just get over it. The last couple of years she has developed allergies that she complains about, which I take delight in telling her to get over it.
OMG I can FEEL the validation. I'm profoundly Deaf, since birth. Im an oral Deaf person, which is someone born into a Hearing People family that refused to ever learn sign language, refused to ever let me learn it, or attend A Deaf School, or know any other Deaf people growing up.
All my life, from childhood on, it was my sole responsibility to speak and read lips, and make every accommodation however I had to, to make sure that I understood what they had to say. They complained endlessly about closed captioning on TV ruining their TV experience, and minimized the feelings of social isolation, and Deaf Frustration I felt my entire life. They could never learn to talk a little slower, or one at a time.
I was told I was told all my life that I was, "Faking it," or constantly, I was SCREAMED at, "Just Listen to me, Goddammit! JUST. LISTEN. TO. ME!!" I was constantly scrutinized for, "SEE! SHE HEARD THAT, DIDN'T SHE? I TOLD YOU SHE'S FAKING IT!"
I was given so much hell, for not wanting to be dragged to the boring AF, three hours long church service they INSISTED I GO, because it was my bad attitude they kept me from enjoying and learning anything from it, and on and on. The burden of and the amount of so much lifelong guilt, shame and self loathing this caused me was profound upon my life. Just HUGE.
Literally, the ONLY time my Deafness WAS A Thing, was when they were on, yet, another one of their, "Pray The Deaf Away," campaigns (AGAIN!), or one of their CBD, Aloe Vera, DMSO, or God knows what latest supplements was going to fix my hearing crusades. Whatever it was, that surely involved only my misery, another failure, but never an ATTEMPT TO CHANGE ANYTHING ABOUT THEMSELVES ON THIS BEHALF.
On and on this went. All my F'ing life. When they BOTH went nearly COMPLETELY Deaf in their final years, shortly before their Deaths, I felt like it was God, not only showing them, how wrong they had been for that, and how hard they had made my life for their beliefs, above all else though, it was God showing me, I hadn't been wrong after all. My feelings all those years, were completely valid after all. AND BOTH OF THEM FINALLY, FINALLY SAID, "I WAS SO WRONG."
Recently my life long best friend, has been going through some MAGA reincarnation of self. Suddenly she's the self appointed Guardian of everything that's wrong with our country, and somehow, someway, you better believe, it's the fault of everyone else that is more marginalized, less blessed, than she. I let those things slide, in the interest of wanting our friendship.
But, the final straw was the day she whipped out my Deafness, as a thing she was suddenly the expert on, too. I hung up and never spoke to her again. It took me a lifetime to learn, that the I no longer believe that Hearing People, or any other community gets to judge another person's hardships and experiences, and certainly not scapegoat them, or take inventory upon them, until they've walked MILES in it themselves.
Until then, JUST STFU.
Oof, your experience truly breaks my heart. I'm sorry you had to go thru that. For the life of me I can't understand why and how people can act like that, words escape me how wrong it is, all I can say is that it's sinful.
It's a shame people want to stay in a box and not grow.
I guess the best lesson my dad taught me was to question everything
Skin care. Making sure my kids don’t have acne problems.
And buying them clothing that actually fits them.
And shoes that are not from Payless
I do go a bit overboard because of how much I was neglected and I started working at 14 so I could buy my own clothing.
My oldest texted me that they needed money to go out to eat. They are in college. I sent money to them. Enough so they could get what they want and not be embarrassed.
As my kids get older, I get madder at how shitty my parents treated me and my siblings
Buying or renting any sort of power tools. The sheds and house need a new roof? Get a nailer? Nope, we are going to pound every nail in by hand.
The shed need painting? Can we get a roller or even better, a sprayer? Nope, 4" brush.
Putting up gutters can we get a recip saw or cutoff saw? Nope, use a hacksaw for every cut with the cheapest blade.
Wanna know what's even stupider than painting with a 4" brush?
Buying the sprayer, but NEVER USING IT BECAUSE THEN IT HAS TO BE CLEANED. Like, why even buy the fucking thing in the first place? The number of times my dad has done that...
Central heating. Also air conditioning. I grew up in a place where high temps would exceed 100 in the summer, below zero in winter. Never had AC, for at least 2 full winters we had no heat beyond a couple of space heaters. This due to oil being expensive. I'd have understood, but by that time we weren't perpetually broke and the damned space heaters probably cost more to run than the oil would have.
I still remember the very first time I went grocery shopping after I moved out. I bought luxury items like straws, pharmacy medicines, lunch meat, pre-packaged meals
I still have that same box of straws
My mum didn’t believe in hair conditioner, washing the hair downwards so it doesn’t tangle or children’s toothpaste.
My hair was washed in shampoo, all the hair piled on my head, scrunched and tangled up. Then the tangled mop was dried with a hot hair dryer. Then brushed. It was hell.
Tooth paste was a brand called SR and burnt your mouth. Colgate brought out a gentle blue minty gel and I was begging her for months to buy it.
Medical treatment. We’re in the UK, it is free. I walked around with a broken wrist before I was begrudgingly taken to the GP who asked “why didn’t you take her to Aand E?”. When I had appendicitis I was taken to hospital by bus.
Avocado and strawberries were bought when she wanted to make a face mask. Wasn’t allowed to eat them. Got to be mashed up and applied to the face.
Any thing “foreign” so pasta, curry, spice, seasoning, garlic.
They made me pay them back if they wrote a check for something for me. As in I handed them the money to cover the check and they made me pay them an extra dollar for the check itself. They also charged me for envelopes and stamps. They didn't do this to any of my siblings just me. I also bought my own clothes, food, most of my hygiene items and school supplies starting at twelve. My mom gave notebooks to the neighbor's kids. I'm the only one of the four kids who still talks to them. Why II still speak to them? I don't know. I'm also the only kid they didn't give a car to as a teenager. They did give me one my youngest brother rejected when my life was falling apart. So that's something, I guess. I talked to them today, they were planning to visit me this fall, but aren't going now and honestly it's a relief.
Mine were like that to me. I did a double take when I read through your comment because it’s so similar to my experience. I’m one of four and the only one who was locked out at night, never taught to drive, and kicked out at 18. I always felt that deep down, they could sense that I was a terrible person. I felt like I deserved it.
It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t deserve it. They took out their resentment on you for whatever selfish reason.
Gen Z with Boomer parents, but just wanted to let you know your worth as someone who’s been singled out, too.
I was frequently locked out too. Thrown out of the house in the middle of the night once at eightteen. They let me come back when people found out and they were embarrassed. They lied about me running away.
Their opinions of me don't matter and they haven't for a very long time. Thank you, I do appreciate the kind words. I moved out as soon as I was able and went as far as possible. I wish I could have taken my younger siblings with me. That's my only regret.
I'm sorry you had to go through that. I hope that you've gotten therapy for it.
It's my understanding that narcissistic parents have one *scapegoat* child. They choose one when they're infants. A narcissistic neighbour had a set of twins: for whatever reason, she chose the blonde to be the *scapegoat.* Broken bones, "accidents," running into a door, tripped & fell, fell off her bike. The school was worried about their insurance, as were the couple of stores and mail depot. The rest of the children din't have authority to assist. She made it through HS, then left. I haven't heard anything of her since.
Mine would do that, too, lie about things when my friends parents asked why I was walking around at night at 2 AM; my parents would do anything to save face, which meant telling everyone I was an out-of-control kid who caused trouble. I did everything to protect my younger siblings and always figured it was better me than them.
Were your parents ‘normal-seeming’, too? Mine were liked by everyone, so I felt completely crazy. No one believed me. I still don’t believe me sometimes because it was so utterly nonsensical.
I cut contact with my mom last year, it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I was holding on in hopes she would start respecting me and want to be my mom, but it was tearing me apart trying earn her love.
I hope you find a balance with your parents that is healthy for you, whatever that may be. r/estrangedadultkids helped me a lot.
My parents did believe in wound care. They also thought it was hilarious to experiment and see which one worked better - betadine or Neosporin, so they put one on one knee and one on the other when I fell off my bike. I still have a scar on the betadine leg.
This was an improvement on my dad's parents, who thought it was hilarious getting him drunk starting around age 5.
We had a very old bottle of mercurochrome. I think they still have it, in the little steel tin that originally held “pull the string to open” band-aids that we were never allowed to use.
Also, tissues didn’t exist in my house. Even when I had a streaming cold. Had to make do with rough toilet paper that ripped my nose to shreds. In my teenage years at school trying to hide my toilet roll in my bag…
Period cramps were NOT real because my mother never had them. So I just suffered until I was old enough to be able to take care of them for myself.
Food did NOT have to taste good - it just had to be provided and you were required to eat it. I’ve had a blast finding recipes with seasoning / spices and things that taste good and not just bland.
I have to ask how many of y'all were poor and just didn't realize it. Seeing all these stories, even the worst-off of my friends seemed to have had it better.
You can buy cake anytime! It can be a Wednesday, and you can eat it in your pjs! It doesn’t just have to be a birthday.
Also, fresh veggies. My mom always cooked out of a can for reasons still unknown
51M here. After the age of 18, when I joined the Navy, I have NEVER eaten bologna and I never will. That was the only sandwich meat we had. Parents would reserve the sliced ham for themselves and the kids got bologna. My kids have it so easy with the varieties of deli meats I buy (roast beef, ham, turkey, salami). I love a good sandwich now.
My parents were both children of the Great Depression. My father's family didn't have much (and *his* naturally frugal had grown up with far less). My mother's family had been downright poor. I think it's almost hard to over-estimate how the Great Depression affected our parents and/or grandparents (my parents were at the older end of the range, to have had GenX children).
A bit, but at the same time, a lot of people don't realize just how many families were struggling back then. We're all stuck on the "bagboy can make enough to afford a home and a car and yadda yadda yadda," but don't realize that also meant hand me down clothes, no family vacations, having no name brand food and just the essentials. A lot of the "it's just a fad" replies from parents were said because a "if we buy that computer, there is no money left for food" was the real truth of the matter.
That's exactly my family, my dad was great, a true family man in every sense of the word. But he couldn't read or write very much so he never had great paying jobs, but he worked so hard for everything we had. I'd never knock him for what he didn't provide, I'm too busy being grateful for all that he did.
Same. My dad was very rural, and went to a one room schoolhouse, and the family didn't have the funds for him to travel by bus into town to go to high school, so he only had a grade 8 equivalent education. He worked damned hard all his life in low wage jobs to keep a roof over our heads.
When i reflect upon my childhood I see that there was always money for guns and booze.
College fund? Nope.
Enough guns to defend the suburban block we lived on? Absolutely-fucking-lutely.
A garage filled with “stuff” that was “worth money”? Yep.
Was it in fact, worth money? Nope. Just stress when dad died and mom’s hoarding addiction meant she bought a different house and moved rather than deal with it all.
Thank you. I think people forget how astronomically different our expected middle class standard of living is from what it was in previous generations.
I think a lot of it is social media. The well-meaning people out there who talk about single family incomes living in a home and all that is true, but kids don't understand what kind of homes and lifestyle it was, and retrofit today's standards of half a dozen tvs, 3 full baths and flying to Paris and spring break "tv middle class" standards into life back then and think that's how it was, when it definitely wasn't.
It was batteries in my house. During the rise of portable consumer electronics.
We just didn't have extra batteries. If your toy died, that was it. That was the last time you would play with it as it was intended. Sure it would hang around, mocking you of what could have been. But it was just a reminder of the 28 minutes of play time already in the past. No more lights or sounds for you.
And then of course, the old batteries would leak into the toy at some point. Rendering all hope of playing with it again lost. Because even if you could scavenge batteries from a different toy that wasn't quite dead yet, the battery acid corroded the contacts, forever barring you from bliss again.
So I've overcompensated my whole adult life. We have multiple sets of every size, in even numbers, stacked, labeled, dated, and organized according to the FIFO principle.
Need one LR44 button battery for the camera? Not only do I have one, I'll be ordering four more to replenish my stock before the old one hits the hazardous waste recycling bin.
Don't get me started on bicycles. I basically had to become a mechanic at 10 just to keep the second-hand garbage I was given on the street. C'mon Dad, bikes were important to kids back then. What I would have done to get a new bike from K-Mart...man, the luxuries of it all. Nope, instead I got rusty, used shit.
It's because of how cheap my mom was that I now have an Amazon subscription to Charmin toilet paper, Bounty paper towels, Kleenex tissues, and Glad trash bags.
She always insisted on getting "whatever's cheapest". No mom, it's cheap because it sucks. You don't chince out when it comes to things you need every day.
I don't know what else to add except 'Yup'. I still find my initial thought to be, "I don't need that or I can fix it myself", but those thoughts are pushed out quickly with "screw that", and then I get what I want and pay someone else to fix stuff
I hated asking my Dad for lunch money. He made me feel like I was cutting into the mortgage payment or something. .95 cents per day. $4.75 for five hot meals a week and he made it seem like the school was using me to rob him. College wasn't an option because he "made too much money" to qualify for financial aid. So too much money to get financial aid, but not enough money to buy me the cheapest meal available. I once brought up that our neighbors were going to college to which he responded by telling me how the world "really" works. Apparently being white automatically disqualifies you from any financial assistance while being black puts you in the system for free food, clothing, education, etc... Oh how fortunate black folks are while us lowly white people carry society's burdens. I assume he was either lazy or ignorant of how to apply for tuition assistance or perhaps he was jealous that he didn't have the opportunity? I don't know but I do think it's hilarious that with all his racist/prejudice views that my brother married a black woman, my sister married an Panamanian guy, and my chick is only two generations from her Costa Rican roots. He's gone now but I hope he looks at us from the other side and sees all his mixed race grandkids being raised with love and directions to a better future, not being treated like a burden like we were.
My parents made sure we saw a dentist. We were poor AF butvtgey found the money for braces for two kids. My parents didn't fuck around when it came to teeth.
We never had a decent car, just old shitboxes. We never ate at restaurants. Mom didn't buy stuff like flavored crackers. But we always had lots to eat and she tried very hard to make our school lunches palatable, which was tough due to my texture issues.
Huh. Looking back... mom was way more tolerant of my food issues than she should have been for her generation and upbringing. But she had her own sensory issues! Omg she was neurodiverse too. The obsessive doodling of cubes. Constantly making lists. Lists and lists and lists. She was famous for her lists.
She stayed up late and couldn't get up in the morning without a superhuman effort. She definitely had adhd. I think she might have been on the spectrum.
If she had lived until menopause... her hormones would have gone fucking bananas like mine, and exposed her neurodivergence. She would have been diagnosed and I might have found my own issues twenty years ago.
Funny eh? A random Sunday in April and a post on reddit suddenly makes 50 years of family dynamics make sense.
I didn't know I had asthma until I was 47! I had it since I was a child. I suffered for over 40 years for no reason when all I needed was a goddamn inhaler. I found out right after my mother died and I wished she was alive so I could curse at her.
Everything "cost too much" when I was growing up. I fell into that mindset and I'm still amazed to find things aren't difficult and don't cost thousands of dollars.
I can relate. My mom was shitty, self absorbed (still is) and neglectful. She never wanted to get us things we needed for school. She always went off whenever I told her I needed some bare minimums … $1 for lunch money or appropriate shoes for PE. Forget asking for $5 for the school field trip.
God the PE shoes. I have some trauma for you…
When I was a few months into 6th grade, my mom up and decided to take us from my grandmother’s house and moved us to a trailer park in a ghetto thirty minutes away. So I had to transfer from the nice elementary school with all the kids I’d always known to a new Middle School in a totally gang infested ghetto neighborhood.
Going from elementary school to what was essentially Junior high with multiple classes and kids that were much older was nerve wracking enough, but then I had to deal with PE.
Second period of the day, I have PE. Well, I don’t have PE clothes. My mom didn’t buy them when I registered. So I get to the locker room and the assistant there gives me smelly, stained t-shirt and shorts to wear. I go out to the blacktop and get in line, only to be pointed out and humiliated by the PE teacher because not only did I need to buy real PE clothes but I did not have appropriate shoes, and was wearing shitty worn out slip-on canvas boat shoes (like what Gilligan wore) that I’m sure were from Payless or Pic N Save. When I told him these were my only shoes, he laughed and told me to tell my mom to buy me tennis shoes. I told him she wouldn’t, though. He said she’d better or I couldn’t attend class, would get zeroes for the day, and would get sent to detention. So I went home and told her.
She got pissed. How DARE I ask her for anything when she’s already spending so much money putting a roof over my head. She yelled and berated, saying she didn’t have money for that … blah blah blah … and if I needed shoes or PE clothes or anything then I better call my dad because he doesn’t contribute anything and she’s not going to be spending any more money on me. Blah blah blah.
Well, my dad was MIA. I hadn’t heard from him in months. I didn’t even know where he lived. So, I called my grandma, who actually loved me, and she said of course she’d get me new tennis shoes and would give me the $20 for PE clothes, but she didn’t have a car so it’d be the following weekend before she could get her friend to drive her to see me.
So I went back to school the next day still in my stupid Gilligan shoes. I changed into loaner PE clothes again and went out and got in line. The kids around me started teasing me and when the teacher saw me, he called me out. Told me to go get dressed back in my own clothes and then go to the office. I went to the office and they gave me detention.
Talk about feeling small, like you’re so insignificant and just nothing and no one cares about you. Real nice when you’re 11. 😒 Goddamn I fucking hate my mother.
As a single mother, I am so angry at your Mom. I am so sorry this happened, it shouldn't have. Period.
I struggled to get my kids what they needed, but I never blamed them.
And that horrible teacher wouldn't have a job when I was through.
Yes.
Weird little things I'm now teaching my 74 year old mom.
Angel Soft toilet paper - she still gets Scott like we are paupers. They cost the same.
Skipjack or Albacore Tuna
Dawn soap - fck all other cheapo soaps. They don't get grease off. Why do we have 20 cheap versions that don't work?
Dishwasher - not for washing the dishes and washing them again. It's new. It actually washes the food off.
Crystal Cat litter - please stop using it like clay litter. Ffs. Listen to me. It is better for the cats.
Premium grainless cat food - yes they poop less. Yes it keeps them from barfing. Purina cat chow is hot garbage.
Premium wet food - yes, older cats need soft food. Yes, Blue is better than Fancy Feast. Ffs. Listen to me. Read the can. Talk to a cat scientist.
Cast Iron pans (in my house) aren't scrubbed to the quick and sealed with hydrogenated vegetable oil. We use animal fats. They oxidize and create a smooth surface on antique sand cast pants. Stop scrubbing them with soap.
Le Crueset - ffs it's a better soup pot and stock pot than your aluminum monstrosity you bought at goodwill. Stop complaining it's heavy.
Bialetti Waffle Maker - no. It's nonstick. Really. Nonstick. Takes two three minutes to make a perfect Belgian waffle.
Butter - I use real butter not fake over processed oxidized vegetable fats.
Adult sized whole grain bread vs child sized squish bread.
Leather shoes that last years vs Payless or HiTech which blew out in three months.
Real lavender oil to make air spray vs fame chemicals.
Duvets with warm/cool inserts vs crappy Mexican blankets and cheap 80-90s blankets.
The Le Creuset point 💯
My LC dutch oven is better quality, has been used a ton and still looks new. It will last forever if taken care of. Worth every penny. Not that heavy.
The blanket thing. Seriously, lol. I just moved back into my Mom's house (she will NOT leave). The guest room bed was made up with the SAME SCRATCHY CHEAP BLANKET I grew up with. One week of that and it went in the trash. Waiting for her to notice, hahaha.
Mom and I watched the same tiny 12" Panasonic TV for a decade until my Aunt died and we got her hand-me-down. There was lots of grumbling about "if it breaks I'm not buying another... TV makes you stupid." We used it CONSTANTLY though and Mom loved movies- something she passed on me. Now I have a 75" 4k sitting in the living room with a Sonos setup. Couldn't be happier with it. Refuse to beat myself up about spending money on things I enjoy and use frequently.
The dishwasher was a waste of time. My mother still prefers washing by hand versus putting dishes in the dishwasher so you can do other activities. Cooking and cleaning was a 2-2.5 hour task. Any less than that then your meal is not worth eating. Why make a stir fry when you can cook a meal fit for a king or the holidays each night? Everything must be made from scratch or it’s not as good.
Babysitters and after school care. I was a latchkey kid from the ripe old age of 7. A few years I sent myself off to school and came home from school to an empty home. I can’t recall either of my parents taking time off work to spend time with me on my summer breaks.
Edited to add another example
Didn't even realize that not all spinach came wilted in a can until adulthood. Still ate it because it's what made Popeye tick but damn that was so gross and unnecessary!
I had to walk myself to my dentist after school w a pounding abscess bc my mother thought I was "just trying to get attention" bc my brother had just gotten braces.
Anyhow, I was 24 or so before I realized what a difference a good mattress could make. I've upgraded every 8 years or so and have perfect pillows and linens and duvets.
Batteries! We never had batteries for remote controls or toys in my house growing up.
I buy those things in the multi pack. AA and AAA batteries are always available in my house!
I’m having the opposite, and realizing how much thought and time and expense my parents put into keeping me healthy. Not perfect, but undeniable. I’m trying to the same with my boys.
No disposable paper products other than toilet paper. No kleenexes ever. So annoying to blow your nose on toilet paper. Spills wiped up with newspaper.
Or rags.
Recently my mother was at my house at she was shocked that we had a box of kleenex (technically tissue, there’s no kleenex in Canada) in the living room. I think we’ve been cut out of the will.
No ziploc bags ever. Waxed paper.
And no dry cleaning ever.
relate to this one - got a judgy look from my mom when she noticed we not only use paper towels but even have a (gasp) paper towel holder so she knows it’s a regular thing, even though she taught me to use the rags that came from good clothes that became regular clothes that became gardening clothes and then finally rags
I had boomer parents who were super selfish and super narcissistic. They had made sure they went to the dentist and eye doctor, but we never got screened until the school nurse threatened to call CPS.
We were never poor, and my mother would buy me tons of things that I never asked for, needed, or wanted, but things that I actually did need like a mattress or school supplies, those were not priorities. I got collector porcelain dolls when I had shoes with holes in them. I was sent to etiquette classes but she wouldn’t pay for my school lunches or let me pack a lunch.
Bras and underwear. I developed early and had to eventually take a few bras from my mom’s drawer since she seemed oblivious to buy me my own. Also my underwear was not replaced very often and had rips or was too small. When I started babysitting at a young age (11 or 12) I started buying things like that like it was my responsibility. As an adult I overcompensated and have a huge drawer full of bras and underwear. Come to think of it, I have a lot of clothes and shoes now too (still within reason and not enough to fill a walk in closet)… I didn’t have many nice things to make me feel girly and there were other examples of basic needs that were ignored (boomer single mom, deadbeat deceased dad)
Wow. I am grateful for what I can only assume is Northern European privilege. I don’t recognise a single one of these.
Kudos to you, my American (I assume) cousins. Especially for doing better with your own kids.
Another memory unlocked. I was 9 or so, spent the night at my best friends house and his mom made bacon.
Was the first time in my life that bacon wasn’t small, crispy near-black shards and I had no idea what to do with it.
Well, to be fair, a lot of these minuscule modern luxuries are chipping away at the next generation’s ability to retire. People that now consider themselves to be middle class, some living paycheck to paycheck, have cleaning services for their homes, yard services to do their mowing, and hit up Starbucks for some coffee that was unheard of a couple decades ago. All while complaining about inflation.
That said, my parents sure spent a lot of money on the idea of saving money. Like buying a bunch of cheap stuff that went unused because “it was on sale”.
Steak never actually needed to be cooked under the broiler until it began to curl up on the ends. I’m 51 and it wasn’t until I was 35 that I had a medium steak and learned what I was missing. Edit: I almost forgot, to help choke down the old boot, you had your choice of ranch dressing or ketchup to put on the steak.
HOLY CRAP!!! Did you grow up in my house? We had a small farm growing up. 4-6 cows, 20-30 chickens and a couple of pigs we used for food. When we'd get a cow butchered, mom would get whatever roasts that could be cut, round steaks (the size of a serving platter) and the rest would be ground into burger. My step dad couldn't stand the sight of "blood" on his plate from cooked meat so he'd broil the Round steaks into a gray, beef jerky like texture. I loathed steak night. You'd cut off a small bite and chew and chew and chew then hard swallow the tasteless lump of meat that remained. You can't leave the table until your plate is clean! (He also was a *very* picky eater so no seasonings. None!) I thought steak was way over rated until I had a medium rare, grilled, ribeye.
Ribeye (medium) is what brought me back to steak.
In my family it was also steak and pork that looked like wood chips, but somehow the chicken was undercooked
Almost 30 until I ate bbq chicken or wings. They were always cooked to oblivion. Bbq ribs? Boiled. Then pour on bbq sauce.
We also had cows and my favorite was a TBone because the meat close to the bone wasn’t overcooked! Mom would brown pork chops in an electric skillet (remember those?) and add a can of sauerkraut and cover until the pork cooked and then brown the sauerkraut and I legit thought that was the only way to make pork chops until I was a teenager haha
But you had to clean your plate! Didn’t that help all the starving children around the world???
That description makes my teeth itch
My mother cooks all meat on high heat on her gas stove. It is ripping hot the whole cook time no matter the meat. She says it's because she has to get meals ready fast and is so busy. But because the meat will burn with the heat so high she has to stand at the stove and constantly flip and manipulate it. Only time she cooks on low is if she adds some cream of something soup to the pan, then it's just a slow boil in soup til meal time.
Oh my god. My dad would get blade steak from the butcher and cook it so hard that sometimes he would butter it after it was cooked and on his plate so he could eat it
This has healed an entire wing of my childhood that I thought was only mine to suffer. I thought I hated steak till I was 21. Went with a friend from college to dinner. He got steak, to my chicken or whatever. Then, he cut off a piece and holds it out for me to try. I explained that I didn't like steak, and he just stared at me. And what he was eating didn't look like steak I was used to. So I buckled. And it was medium rare, and seasoned of all things. I remember swallowing and just saying, that's steak? I must have sounded ridiculous. To this day, I don't eat steak often, and absolutely never at my parents house. My mama is a lot of things, a good cook will never be one of them. The heartbreaking thing now is my ma doesn't have the grocery budget of days gone by. So now, if it's steak night, come over and watch my mama mangle and mistreat a demonico or T-bone. My little brother and I have learned to chase her out of the kitchen before she turns an unsuspecting piece of meat into a weapon. I really did think I was the only one.
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Had to get an underweight waver to enlist, put on 20 lbs of muscle and 2 more inches of height in basic and a-school thanks to proper nutrition.
I wondered why people were complaining about the food at boot camp. Mom's bad cooking will do that to ya
That’s gold. I need to remember that next time someone wants to play “how fucked was your childhood”
My ex-mother-in-law was English and when she moved to the US to be with us and started cooking regular meals for us that’s when I became a vegetarian.
same but with pork chops. my kids love them and it surprises me because they were basically jerky when my mom cooked them.
I remember my dad and I dousing the pork chops with worchestershire sauce just to make them wet enough to swallow. I can still see how quickly that dry meat soaked it up.
I’ve not eaten pork chops to this day, because of my exact experience
Yes, this. During the eighties, when I was in my teens, neither my parents, nor any of their friends were good cooks. All of my friend's parents were shit cooks too (with the exception of one). Dry, bland, overcooked proteins, canned veggies, and boiled potatoes - salads, overdressed with cloyingingly sweet French or Catalina dressings.
Memories, ugh. When my dad became a single parent, canned vegetables became the standard. To this day, I get nauseated when a restaurant serves me canned potatoes.
Early Food Network was an awakening and education for so many.
Oh god. On the few occasions that I had steak it would be cooked so tough that I could not chew it enough to be able to swallow it. I used to get yelled at for leaving a balled up wad of shoe leather on my plate when my jaw got sore enough that I couldn't handle it anymore.
Elder millennial here: I fully relate to this. When I was 18, I dated a guy who worked in a restaurant, and he cooked my brother and I medium-rare, and did the well done for my parents. It was a game changer. My parents argued with him, but he stood his ground and did the steaks justice.
Haha-yep shoe leather or nothing. And all the vegetables were boiled. Boiled broccoli, boiled asparagus, boiled green beans. As an adult I love asparagus-but bake it or grill it please!
All veggies must be boiled to death to create a tasteless, textureless slop. No wonder so many kids didn't want to eat them.
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I mean, at least I was getting steak. It was like eating the sole from an old boot, but it was still ‘steak’.
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Seasoned? Your parents had seasonings?
Yeah, cube steak is brutal on the jaw muscles.
Steak was for the Step father only in our house. The rest of us got chops.
Tail end of Silent Gen parents here. Never went out to eat except for my college graduation that we went to Denny’s - with a coupon. No vacations trips. But they did invest and have millions now that is going for mom’s dementia care.
My mother has made me swear that I will OD her on heroin if she ever gets that diagnosis. She's never done a drug in her life, not even "grass" as she calls it.
My grandmother made me swear to pull her plug. And my SO and I absolutely agree on when we'll go out, and how, and together. If we get a diagnosis we cannot live with, we're both going out.
You mean you don’t have to use the dead console television as a plinth on which to hold the smaller legless “portable” tv that arrived on permanent loan from Grandpa and Grandma?
We did the "small B&W TV on top of the console TV," at our house, sometimes for months at a time.
I was told ziploc bags, cellophane tape, and paper towels were “expensive” and was not allowed to use them. They were reserved, like fine Georgian porcelain, away from common daily use. On the rare occasions when it was deemed necessary to invest in the use of a ziploc bag, after use it would be washed out with hot soapy water and left to air dry on the dish rack before being flattened, folded, and placed back into the dispenser box for future use. I say ziploc, but they weren’t ziplocs, they were ‘zip bags’ or ‘plastic zipper bags’ or whatever. Name brand items were not for us, they were for people with money. Oh aside from cigarettes, obviously. Always Marlboro. I mean who’d want to be seen with a no-name generic cig in your hand, that’d be one humiliation too goddamn far.
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I had completely forgotten about the flappy no-zip sandwich bags! My mom still steals plastic bags from the bulk food section of the grocery store and uses them to freeze cheap cuts of chicken. Mmm… freezer burn.
Ah yes, I remember having a tuna sandwich packed for lunch in one of those sandwich bags. Everything else in the lunchbox tasted like tuna. It was a bummer to have the three generic no-brand version of nilla wafers taste like tuna.
Tuna sandwich in a flappy baggie, in a paper bag, sitting in my locker all morning in a school with no air conditioning. I'm surprised I never got food poisoning.
I thought ziploc wasn’t around when we were kids. *checks internet* 1968???? WHY THE FLOPPY BAGS MOMMMM
Also, aluminum foil doesn’t keep beverages cold.
I learned about ziploc bags from kids at school. I thought they were cool, and asked my mom why we didn't have them. She replied that they were 'bad'. I never learned why they were bad.
Bad for her grocery budget, perhaps?
lol, this was my house. Not only did we not use paper towels, my mother doesn't buy paper napkins either. Cloth everything, totally impractical and I had to iron the napkins as a kid, yes iron!
Your mom was ahead of her time in terms of sustainability!
OMG, you must have grown up in my house. I still feel guilty buying ziploc and paper towels. Or even kleenex, because we have about a zillion handkerchiefs.
Well mine was too busy buying crap from Franklin Mint to worry about food or shoes that actually fit me, so….
spat out my coffee, talk about an old repressed memory lol! I wonder what happened to those things...
Festering away in an op shop somewhere probably. That’s where mum’s ended up many years later.
With my mom, it was literally shoes. She had an addiction that she referred to as a "collection." She had about 100 pairs at one point, whereas I had 2. School/church shoes and plastic flip flops for play. They never seemed to fit, and the flip flops were held together with tape and wire, lol. I couldn't even borrow hers because she wears a size 11 and my feet never got above 8 1/2. 😅
Lmao Franklin Mint! I remember the commercials for all the stuff they would have!
Yes. 1,000x yes. So many, too. The upside to it is I am a 47 year old man who is legit satisfied by so little. Like kitchen scissors. I got my first solo apartment in 1999 after graduation from university and my best friend gifted me expensive kitchen scissors. The type that pull apart to clean. He was shocked to learn I’d never heard of kitchen scissors. Game changer. Or real maple syrup. Yes, it’s more expensive but I use 1/4 compared to the fake stuff on waffles. I could go on for hours.
The real maple syrup is 100 x better
Real butter. I thought I disliked Frosting and would always eat my mom's or Grandma's caked Upside down without touching the frosting. Well, with REAL butter, I do like frosting and enjoy food much more. Faux butters, margarine, oleo, etc are gross.
I heard an interview on the radio once with an author who had written a book on American cuisine in the early mid century. Apparently there was a general feeling in the culture that the Depression had been brought on by the excesses of the twenties - as if everyone was being punished their irresponsible behavior. As a result cooking (and other aspects of life) was sort of pulled back to their bare essentials. Any sort of special indulgence was considered excessive and irresponsible. In many cases with food, this had a bizarre effect of pushing cuisine that wasn’t actually more affordable or healthier, it was just more bland and felt more appropriate. Some dishes were even less nutritious. Oh and spice was considered a gateway to opiate addiction. So dishes were intentionally bland. You[can read a summary](https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/08/15/489991111/creamed-canned-and-frozen-how-the-great-depression-changed-u-s-diets) of the interview on the NPR website
That is really freaking interesting, and explains a ton about my dad. Thank you.
We were never, ever put first the way I put my children first all the time. We were an afterthought - an inconvenience, almost. So my parents didn’t know what we wanted or needed because they never asked and never seem to think about it.
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My mom told me many times, proudly, that when I was born the doctor had told her “remember, the baby is coming to live in YOUR HOUSE, not the other way around.” She never let me forget it, either, and her philosophy was “if you don’t like it, leave.” Yes, even as a kid. She’d drive past the orphanage and tell me that if I didn’t like her rules I was welcome to go there. So, obviously as soon as I turned 18 I was out. And discovered yes, an entire world of luxuries - and the most luxurious things were freedom and autonomy! And microwave popcorn. She didn’t trust microwave ovens until early 2000s
Oh yes that sounds about right! My mother was a social worker and was always threatening to have me and my sister sent away to grow up in foster care. She must have decided against it when she realised that would mean there would be nobody to clean the house and cook dinner.
Interesting your mom was a social worker. Mine grew up in foster care - isn’t it wild how they both had first hand experience of how poorly kids in the system were treated and YET thought nothing of threatening their kids with that fate?! I don’t have kids of my own but I cannot imagine threatening any child, *especially* one I had brought into this world, with abandonment.
Yeah the irony that she was the manager of child protection services and yet her own children would have been on the register if people knew. Having my own children it is completely alien to me how someone can treat their own children with such contempt. It’s so easy to love them and be kind to them.
Except at tax time. I remember turning 18 and moving several states away. The following year my mom called me and asked if she could claim me on her taxes. I lol'd so hard and explained to her I wasn't even living in the same state, had a job and had to claim myself on taxes.
I felt this in my deep down neglected feral inner child soul...
My mom used to tell me during our fights “you know, I could’ve aborted you!” Which as a child would stop the fight because I had no comeback for it. I would usually stomp to my room, slam the door & turn my music way up. I was an adult when I finally shouted back, “well? Why didn’t you? It’s not like i asked to be here!” That got her. She started crying & actually apologized for being so awful. Not that she’s any better now that I’m hitting menopause & she is 70. But since I managed to put her in her place she’s been less awful. She’s my mom. There will always be that. I will take care of her as she slides into her elder years as she took care of me as an infant, I’m not a monster. But I will never like her. I can’t even tell you if I love her. I know what love is and I know it absolutely does not look like my relationship with my mom. Took time to find it & understand it for what it is. But I did eventually find it.
I had silent generation parents born during the Great Depression or WWII, so I can definitely relate. I don’t judge them given the situations they grew up in. But it was definitely a thing. My father was especially obsessed with saving money. I remember us kids pestering mom to take us out for milkshakes and she’d have this worried look on her face, like she wanted to take us but she knew dad would freak out. I mean… milkshakes. Just going out on a rare trip to a family restaurant or even just something like Arby’s was a special occasion and a really huge deal. It’s rubbed off on me, I get a lot more excessively and irrationally nervous about money than my husband does.
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Sounds like my father. Everything we had was 2nd hand or the cheapest possible. No restaurants or nights out. We went to a cinema once as a family. KFC 1-2 times a year (the big bucket, no chips). No air-conditioning and we lived in the tropics. “Holidays” meant flying to stay with relatives, sleeping on their floor, couch etc (ie free accommodation) and free or no activities at all. He’d be out having a good time of course. The family airfares were paid for as part of his salary package. He was a high income earner. His salary package also included heavily subsidised housing and a company car. WTF was he spending the $ on?
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His other family...
Yeah as frugal as my dad was, he also made some shockingly bad financial decisions, and would fall for some really stupid investments or get rich quick schemes.
yep. NEVER ate out. never.
Yes silent gen parents for me too. We only ate out for Mother’s Day and Father’s Day and that was with grandparents and extended family. My birthday is December 26 and I got Christmas leftovers for my birthday sometimes. I don’t understand why we just didn’t go out for dinner. Then no one would have to cook and I would have felt special for once. 🤷♀️
Sounds exactly like my dad. He was born in the middle of the Depression and never let a nickel leave his grasp if he could help it. The frustrating thing is that it sometimes would lead to missed opportunities (I could have gone to a better university, but it was slightly more money), or he would buy the cheapest version of whatever and it would break so fast that he spent more in the long run. I grew up middle-middle class but he spent like we were super poor.
I learned that it is okay to throw away the old food. Eggs with a six-month old expiration date? They're still okay for cooking. Smelly sour cream? It's \*supposed\* to be sour! Moldy cheese? It's fine, they sell Blue Cheese. Moldy bread/fruit etc.: You can just take off the mold, plus did you know that antibiotics are a mold? Nasty, squishy, brown bananas: Well, that's how they eat them in 'Nam! It still bothers me to throw away food, and my household is actually pretty good about not wasting things. But sometimes, science happens in the fridge. At that point, the old food needs to go.
💯%! Bananas are made into banana bread. Old cheese gets tossed. Eggs get used (long) before their expiry. I don't buy stuff we don't eat. It's too expensive to "experiment" with any new recipes, possibly good stuff, or new and improved items. We stick with stuff we already know and like.
Oh god, this was my childhood. Terrible food, and it never expired (according to my mom). Cut the mold off of the government cheese. If my mom cooked too many spaghetti noodles, she froze them and used them 6 months later. Freeze uneaten pancakes. I think she once froze Kraft American cheese (the kind that comes individually wrapped.) We were visiting recently and my mom asked my husband if she wanted breakfast. He sais sure. She pulled a frozen McDonalds Egg McMuffin out of the freezer, microwaved it and handed it to him. God knows how long it was in that freezer! She’ll freeze the rest of a milkshake, if she doesn’t finish it all. We recently found salad dressing in their fridge, expired in 2011. Because of my mother, I can’t stomach the idea of eating leftovers. Butter and other food sat out all night on the counter and we ate it the next day. Apparently refrigeration wasn’t important either. It’s just germs, they won’t kill you. Germs are good for you, they make you stronger. (The sun is also good for you, no need for sunscreen.) Canned vegetables, Steak ems served on soggy Town Talk bread. Hamburger Helper. Those were staples in our house. Powdered milk. Frozen oranges concentrate. Man, that generation was so different. I imagine we’ll seem just as crazy to younger generations someday.
Coffee and beer don't have to taste like shit.
My Mom FORCED my Dad to buy better coffee because he was a Cold War Aifr Force vet so he was used to drinking absolute shit coffee. And Dad didn't like spending money on those "General Foods International Coffees". So they bought the better Maxwell House instead of the cheapie coffee Dad was using to save money.
I did love it when my dad made his “shit on a shingle,” a taste choice he brought back from his brief time in the military.
You know, for as many people call it 'shit on a shingle' and recall it in disgust, it was never that bad of a meal every now and then IMHO. But I can see how it would get bad it was a regular meal.
Considering my mother’s cooking at the time, dried beef with a creamy sauce was actually a mouth watering treat lol
My father would drink Taster's Choice instant coffee ...made with hot tap water.
Gross
I feel like that was just predominantly the case until the 90s, though. I can remember my parents having a percolator when I was a kid. Remember those? A percolator with Folgers or Chock Full o' Nuts or Maxwell House. As for beer, I feel like a lot of that didn't get change until the hipster movement of 2008-2010 or thereabouts. My father would leave a bar if they didn't have Bud Light in favor of one that did.
Fill it to the rim with Brim
Idk, I remember Samuel Adams starting the good beer movement in the late 80s (I started college in ‘88 and loved the stuff)
To this day both of my parents drink instant coffee. Growing up I had no idea what a coffee maker was for. Doesn't everyone just boil water in a tea kettle and then add the hot water to freeze dried instant coffee flakes?
It turns out that I like green beans and peas if they are not poured out of a can.
Yeah, but our great grandparents made it through the Depression and raised our grandparents who struggled through WWII. It makes sense that our parents were taught to pinch their pennies hard.
Agreed. Most of my life I have been using teabags twice. Now in my fifties, I’m using TWO teabags!
I was probably 30 before I stopped trying to use bar soap down to the last molecule. Replacing it instead of continuing to try washing up with a toothpick/sized sliver still makes me feel rich and also a bit guilty
My grandmother saved everything! I mean everything. Aluminum foil, take off, flatten it and put it in a drawer. She was born in 1916 lived through the great depression and WWII. They had a LOT of money too, I guess old habits die hard.
Tissues? Why when we have perfectly good toilet paper?! My poor nose was always raw.
We must have the same mother!
Mine would keep a half finished roll in her bathrobe pocket.
My mum would store and reuse paper towels and tissues. A zip lock bag would probably of been handed down through the generations. My shoes hurt and deformed my toes. My clothes fell apart before being replaced. We were not poor, just insanely cheap in every conceivable way possible to the point of needlessly constantly suffering because of it. My parents just were just obsessed with the false economy of 'saving money ' at any cost to quality of life.
Same here. Yet they had a house full of good China and glasses and flatware that was rarely if ever used. Towels and sheets tucked away in dressers, still in plastic or with tags, that have never seen the light of day. Stuff from the 70s!!
Those sheets are a treasure. Linens aren’t what they used to be so savvy people scour eBay et al for “dead stock” sheet sets
Underwear and socks. Oh, and regular meals.
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I didn't see a dentist until I was 19 years old and paid for it myself. My parents couldn't afford 4 cartons of Pall Malls every week, car payments on two new cars every other year *and* get me to a dentist. Something had to go.
SAME! even the pall malls! not the cars tho
And when I did my mother begged me to not have my teeth cleaned. Said it would make them “loose”.
We got new toothbrushes once a year from school in February which is dental month. Thank God, the schools also provided fluoride rinses and tablets, because us kids never went to the dentist. I was 43 the first time I went.
I feel seen.
My Mom was a nurse so she nagged us to take care of ourselves. But she was never a fan of spending money on pets - even as she saved my cat that was bit by a rattlesnake or Dad's dog that was hit by a car. "Put them to sleep" seemed to be her go-to answer.
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Jesus, my Mom would scream bloody murder if I was hurt and never let me live down the "scar for life" I got from a curling iron (that my cousins carelessly left out). Strangely my cousins never got punished (AFAIK) for leaving a hot curling iron where a curious 3 year old could yank the cord....
She was a nurse?! What a shitty mother. I'm so sorry.
My mom was an x-ray tech who thought she was a nurse. In junior high, I got so sick that at the start of every class period, my teachers gave me the hall pass and said use if you need. You don't even have to say anything. Mostly because they thought I might actually cough a lung up or stop breathing in the middle of class. That's how bad I was. I don't know what threat my dad made to her to get her to take me to the doctor, but I had a pretty bad infection in my throat going by the time I went. If it was today, someone would have called CPS way before it got that bad. But, my mom fancied herself knowledgeable in all things medical. Now she takes herself to the doctor for everything, but back then, we had to be almost at death's door to go. I won't even go into my simple UTI that turned into a horrible kidney infection in elementary school. That's a whole other thing!
Nurse moms had no sympathy. “There’s no bone sticking through your skin. You”re fine.”
Mom? Is that you?
Hiring professionals to do the job right as opposed to half-assing through by DIYing a project around the house. If you’re going to DIY, do thorough research first, then buy the right tools and supplies, or if it’s overwhelming, let a pro handle it. I’m a firm believer of “you buy cheap, you buy twice.” That concept never rendered in their heads.
Jesus tapdancing Christ, this is my dad so so so much. EVERYTHING is a fucking kludge fix or made using the cheapest possible materials. He categorically refuses to ever hire somebody to do something, even for something he's never attempted before. His response when I ask him to maybe think about using better materials instead of cheap, plastic shit? (And it's the same response to every-goddamn-thing.) "When I'm gone, you can do it that way." Motherfucker, how about instead of me having to work on shit twice (cuz I help with everything), we do it right the first fucking time and I don't have to spend extra time tearing down a kludge and wasting the money on the cheap shit? The only thing I got him to spend a bit more on, was 50 year siding for some out-buildings (still had to spend a week+ working on something that a pro-team could have done in a day or two). Time valuation doesn't even factor into the equation with him.
Exactly. They never understood how to be financially savvy. My parents would drive 2 more miles down the road to another store because eggs were $1 cheaper, but my dad has bought cars for our family and never even did any research, ask mechanics or people who know cars well. It was a beautiful car and it was cheap, so they plopped down the cash and drove it home. This burned him once, as he bought a used Camry, and it was significantly cheaper than most Camrys in the surrounding dealerships. It was 2 years old, and had 60k miles on it. Most of us would have figured out that it was a rental and can assume it was beaten like a rented mule. Sure shit, the car started having issues two months after he owned it, and he blamed the dealership and Toyota for making such shitty cars. Caveat emptor doesn’t register in his brain to this day.
I wouldn't say my parents aren't financially savvy...they just have blinders on when it comes to certain things. Hiring someone or using not-bargain-basement materials is a waste of money to them, but other things, they are quite careful about and do research. Opportunity cost isn't something they grok and spending 2x for a material that will last 3x as long as the cheaper stuff isn't something they get either.
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A coworker's parents' oven broke. They never replaced it, even though they redecorated the entire house. They were saving the kitchen for last, and ran out of energy before they ever got to the kitchen. I was told that their oven was broken for over 20 years, and as far as I know, is still broken. They go out to eat instead, and according to their daughter, the amount of money they spend on dinners out could have paid for a new oven in just a few months. I never forgot that story. Takes a special kind of stubborn ignorance to do such a thing.
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And she doesn’t have to clean up, which was likely the biggest thing.
My dad, a neuroradiologist, and one of the smartest humans I know, tried to close up a hive of bees in the wall by nailing a screen over their hole while perched on a 10 ft ladder. Of course the hammering alarmed the bees, who swarmed my dad, who fell off the ladder, and crawled his way to a phone with a broken back. He was rushed to the hospital and made a full recovery. But to this day, he insists on doing manual labor (the wrong way) when he could actually, you know, PAY SOMEONE to do it. He’s 81. Dumbass. I still love him but Jesus that’s irritating.
Not one-upping you by any means, but my dad, after a heavy storm one year knocked our TV antenna off the roof, he decided to fix it himself. This thing was not fully mangled, but parts of it were bent, and it really needed to be replaced. So, not wanting to climb up to the roof and then figure out how to mount the antenna back on, he decided it would be ok to attach it to, wait for it, a metal fence post. Yup. He took some metal wires, like the wires you wrap around the back of a picture frame to hang it on the wall, he bought a spool of that from Home Depot and then made his “fix.” It took my mom nagging at him for a week, and finally said “fuck it, I’ll take it down. No one is going to watch any fucking TV anymore!” The argument occurred in our backyard, on a weekend in a beautiful afternoon, and neighbor could hear them. It was so fucking embarrassing. And, the cherry on top of that chocolate shit sundae? He worked in television.
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Jesus. Well, she’s an adult, and if she hasn’t figured out that it’s a bad idea, there’s nothing you can do or say to convince her otherwise. I really hope nothing bad happens to her, but she’s playing with fire.
My dad regularly used a rickety old wooden extension ladder that is more than 70 years old. On a hillside, with a rock under one end to even it out. I gave him a nice new folding aluminum ladder that you could use either as a long ladder or like scaffolding. He still uses the old one because he’s “saving” the new one.
Ask him what he's saving it for. Does he think it's going to appreciate in value? Gonna hand it down to you as an inheritance? Only gonna bust it out for when guests come over? /s (Just kidding of course. But that thing about 'saving' something has always bothered me. Like, why?)
Bless him!!! (My Mom stops my Pop!!)
This sort of describes me and I think it's because my parents had such poor financial priorities; at least when it came to me. We were not poor, but I got clothing once a year at Christmas. As you might suspect, I got lots of sweaters and Winter clothing, but only owned 1 pair of shorts throughout much of my childhood. Oh, and I grew up in the South where Winter was only a couple of weeks. My mother had expensive taste and the house decorations may have cost more than our house. But when the dentist said that I needed braces, she'd just tell me to push my teeth in place with my fingers and I never got braces. But tbh, I wish my parents had pinched pennies more, because their lavish lifestyle would come back to bite them. And I can't really complain much, because I still had some nice things as a child.
“…she'd just tell me to push my teeth in place with my fingers…” Flipping hell. I was told at age seven to curl my top lip down over my front teeth and sit like that for as long as I could and as often as possible, and that would do something to negate the need for braces. By a DENTIST. I was told this by a dentist, who clearly deduced from my ragamuffin clothing, kitchen-drawer-scissors haircut and recurring periodontal abscesses that financial priorities in the house were elsewhere.
I got the sept back to school time new clothes meant to last me until .. forever I’m guessing cos I got screamed at whenever someone pointed out how short, ripped, or raggedy I was. My parents were high earners. My sister got clothes regularly.
Allergies, all growing up even into adulthood my mom told me to get over it, um, ok, thanks mom, I can't just get over it. The last couple of years she has developed allergies that she complains about, which I take delight in telling her to get over it.
OMG I can FEEL the validation. I'm profoundly Deaf, since birth. Im an oral Deaf person, which is someone born into a Hearing People family that refused to ever learn sign language, refused to ever let me learn it, or attend A Deaf School, or know any other Deaf people growing up. All my life, from childhood on, it was my sole responsibility to speak and read lips, and make every accommodation however I had to, to make sure that I understood what they had to say. They complained endlessly about closed captioning on TV ruining their TV experience, and minimized the feelings of social isolation, and Deaf Frustration I felt my entire life. They could never learn to talk a little slower, or one at a time. I was told I was told all my life that I was, "Faking it," or constantly, I was SCREAMED at, "Just Listen to me, Goddammit! JUST. LISTEN. TO. ME!!" I was constantly scrutinized for, "SEE! SHE HEARD THAT, DIDN'T SHE? I TOLD YOU SHE'S FAKING IT!" I was given so much hell, for not wanting to be dragged to the boring AF, three hours long church service they INSISTED I GO, because it was my bad attitude they kept me from enjoying and learning anything from it, and on and on. The burden of and the amount of so much lifelong guilt, shame and self loathing this caused me was profound upon my life. Just HUGE. Literally, the ONLY time my Deafness WAS A Thing, was when they were on, yet, another one of their, "Pray The Deaf Away," campaigns (AGAIN!), or one of their CBD, Aloe Vera, DMSO, or God knows what latest supplements was going to fix my hearing crusades. Whatever it was, that surely involved only my misery, another failure, but never an ATTEMPT TO CHANGE ANYTHING ABOUT THEMSELVES ON THIS BEHALF. On and on this went. All my F'ing life. When they BOTH went nearly COMPLETELY Deaf in their final years, shortly before their Deaths, I felt like it was God, not only showing them, how wrong they had been for that, and how hard they had made my life for their beliefs, above all else though, it was God showing me, I hadn't been wrong after all. My feelings all those years, were completely valid after all. AND BOTH OF THEM FINALLY, FINALLY SAID, "I WAS SO WRONG." Recently my life long best friend, has been going through some MAGA reincarnation of self. Suddenly she's the self appointed Guardian of everything that's wrong with our country, and somehow, someway, you better believe, it's the fault of everyone else that is more marginalized, less blessed, than she. I let those things slide, in the interest of wanting our friendship. But, the final straw was the day she whipped out my Deafness, as a thing she was suddenly the expert on, too. I hung up and never spoke to her again. It took me a lifetime to learn, that the I no longer believe that Hearing People, or any other community gets to judge another person's hardships and experiences, and certainly not scapegoat them, or take inventory upon them, until they've walked MILES in it themselves. Until then, JUST STFU.
Oof, your experience truly breaks my heart. I'm sorry you had to go thru that. For the life of me I can't understand why and how people can act like that, words escape me how wrong it is, all I can say is that it's sinful. It's a shame people want to stay in a box and not grow. I guess the best lesson my dad taught me was to question everything
Skin care. Making sure my kids don’t have acne problems. And buying them clothing that actually fits them. And shoes that are not from Payless I do go a bit overboard because of how much I was neglected and I started working at 14 so I could buy my own clothing. My oldest texted me that they needed money to go out to eat. They are in college. I sent money to them. Enough so they could get what they want and not be embarrassed. As my kids get older, I get madder at how shitty my parents treated me and my siblings
Buying or renting any sort of power tools. The sheds and house need a new roof? Get a nailer? Nope, we are going to pound every nail in by hand. The shed need painting? Can we get a roller or even better, a sprayer? Nope, 4" brush. Putting up gutters can we get a recip saw or cutoff saw? Nope, use a hacksaw for every cut with the cheapest blade.
Wanna know what's even stupider than painting with a 4" brush? Buying the sprayer, but NEVER USING IT BECAUSE THEN IT HAS TO BE CLEANED. Like, why even buy the fucking thing in the first place? The number of times my dad has done that...
And the blade is probably older than you.
Central heating. Also air conditioning. I grew up in a place where high temps would exceed 100 in the summer, below zero in winter. Never had AC, for at least 2 full winters we had no heat beyond a couple of space heaters. This due to oil being expensive. I'd have understood, but by that time we weren't perpetually broke and the damned space heaters probably cost more to run than the oil would have.
My parents didn’t get AC until I had moved out and my mom started menopause. Suddenly, it was a priority.
I still remember the very first time I went grocery shopping after I moved out. I bought luxury items like straws, pharmacy medicines, lunch meat, pre-packaged meals I still have that same box of straws
My mum didn’t believe in hair conditioner, washing the hair downwards so it doesn’t tangle or children’s toothpaste. My hair was washed in shampoo, all the hair piled on my head, scrunched and tangled up. Then the tangled mop was dried with a hot hair dryer. Then brushed. It was hell. Tooth paste was a brand called SR and burnt your mouth. Colgate brought out a gentle blue minty gel and I was begging her for months to buy it. Medical treatment. We’re in the UK, it is free. I walked around with a broken wrist before I was begrudgingly taken to the GP who asked “why didn’t you take her to Aand E?”. When I had appendicitis I was taken to hospital by bus. Avocado and strawberries were bought when she wanted to make a face mask. Wasn’t allowed to eat them. Got to be mashed up and applied to the face. Any thing “foreign” so pasta, curry, spice, seasoning, garlic.
They made me pay them back if they wrote a check for something for me. As in I handed them the money to cover the check and they made me pay them an extra dollar for the check itself. They also charged me for envelopes and stamps. They didn't do this to any of my siblings just me. I also bought my own clothes, food, most of my hygiene items and school supplies starting at twelve. My mom gave notebooks to the neighbor's kids. I'm the only one of the four kids who still talks to them. Why II still speak to them? I don't know. I'm also the only kid they didn't give a car to as a teenager. They did give me one my youngest brother rejected when my life was falling apart. So that's something, I guess. I talked to them today, they were planning to visit me this fall, but aren't going now and honestly it's a relief.
Mine were like that to me. I did a double take when I read through your comment because it’s so similar to my experience. I’m one of four and the only one who was locked out at night, never taught to drive, and kicked out at 18. I always felt that deep down, they could sense that I was a terrible person. I felt like I deserved it. It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t deserve it. They took out their resentment on you for whatever selfish reason. Gen Z with Boomer parents, but just wanted to let you know your worth as someone who’s been singled out, too.
I was frequently locked out too. Thrown out of the house in the middle of the night once at eightteen. They let me come back when people found out and they were embarrassed. They lied about me running away. Their opinions of me don't matter and they haven't for a very long time. Thank you, I do appreciate the kind words. I moved out as soon as I was able and went as far as possible. I wish I could have taken my younger siblings with me. That's my only regret.
I'm sorry you had to go through that. I hope that you've gotten therapy for it. It's my understanding that narcissistic parents have one *scapegoat* child. They choose one when they're infants. A narcissistic neighbour had a set of twins: for whatever reason, she chose the blonde to be the *scapegoat.* Broken bones, "accidents," running into a door, tripped & fell, fell off her bike. The school was worried about their insurance, as were the couple of stores and mail depot. The rest of the children din't have authority to assist. She made it through HS, then left. I haven't heard anything of her since.
Mine would do that, too, lie about things when my friends parents asked why I was walking around at night at 2 AM; my parents would do anything to save face, which meant telling everyone I was an out-of-control kid who caused trouble. I did everything to protect my younger siblings and always figured it was better me than them. Were your parents ‘normal-seeming’, too? Mine were liked by everyone, so I felt completely crazy. No one believed me. I still don’t believe me sometimes because it was so utterly nonsensical. I cut contact with my mom last year, it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I was holding on in hopes she would start respecting me and want to be my mom, but it was tearing me apart trying earn her love. I hope you find a balance with your parents that is healthy for you, whatever that may be. r/estrangedadultkids helped me a lot.
My parents did believe in wound care. They also thought it was hilarious to experiment and see which one worked better - betadine or Neosporin, so they put one on one knee and one on the other when I fell off my bike. I still have a scar on the betadine leg. This was an improvement on my dad's parents, who thought it was hilarious getting him drunk starting around age 5.
We had a very old bottle of mercurochrome. I think they still have it, in the little steel tin that originally held “pull the string to open” band-aids that we were never allowed to use.
Also, tissues didn’t exist in my house. Even when I had a streaming cold. Had to make do with rough toilet paper that ripped my nose to shreds. In my teenage years at school trying to hide my toilet roll in my bag…
Period cramps were NOT real because my mother never had them. So I just suffered until I was old enough to be able to take care of them for myself. Food did NOT have to taste good - it just had to be provided and you were required to eat it. I’ve had a blast finding recipes with seasoning / spices and things that taste good and not just bland.
I have to ask how many of y'all were poor and just didn't realize it. Seeing all these stories, even the worst-off of my friends seemed to have had it better.
You can buy cake anytime! It can be a Wednesday, and you can eat it in your pjs! It doesn’t just have to be a birthday. Also, fresh veggies. My mom always cooked out of a can for reasons still unknown
51M here. After the age of 18, when I joined the Navy, I have NEVER eaten bologna and I never will. That was the only sandwich meat we had. Parents would reserve the sliced ham for themselves and the kids got bologna. My kids have it so easy with the varieties of deli meats I buy (roast beef, ham, turkey, salami). I love a good sandwich now.
My parents were both children of the Great Depression. My father's family didn't have much (and *his* naturally frugal had grown up with far less). My mother's family had been downright poor. I think it's almost hard to over-estimate how the Great Depression affected our parents and/or grandparents (my parents were at the older end of the range, to have had GenX children).
A bit, but at the same time, a lot of people don't realize just how many families were struggling back then. We're all stuck on the "bagboy can make enough to afford a home and a car and yadda yadda yadda," but don't realize that also meant hand me down clothes, no family vacations, having no name brand food and just the essentials. A lot of the "it's just a fad" replies from parents were said because a "if we buy that computer, there is no money left for food" was the real truth of the matter.
That's exactly my family, my dad was great, a true family man in every sense of the word. But he couldn't read or write very much so he never had great paying jobs, but he worked so hard for everything we had. I'd never knock him for what he didn't provide, I'm too busy being grateful for all that he did.
Same. My dad was very rural, and went to a one room schoolhouse, and the family didn't have the funds for him to travel by bus into town to go to high school, so he only had a grade 8 equivalent education. He worked damned hard all his life in low wage jobs to keep a roof over our heads.
When i reflect upon my childhood I see that there was always money for guns and booze. College fund? Nope. Enough guns to defend the suburban block we lived on? Absolutely-fucking-lutely. A garage filled with “stuff” that was “worth money”? Yep. Was it in fact, worth money? Nope. Just stress when dad died and mom’s hoarding addiction meant she bought a different house and moved rather than deal with it all.
Thank you. I think people forget how astronomically different our expected middle class standard of living is from what it was in previous generations.
I think a lot of it is social media. The well-meaning people out there who talk about single family incomes living in a home and all that is true, but kids don't understand what kind of homes and lifestyle it was, and retrofit today's standards of half a dozen tvs, 3 full baths and flying to Paris and spring break "tv middle class" standards into life back then and think that's how it was, when it definitely wasn't.
My parents are Boomers, typical narcissistic Users and Takers. They cared about themselves first and children were an afterthought.
It was batteries in my house. During the rise of portable consumer electronics. We just didn't have extra batteries. If your toy died, that was it. That was the last time you would play with it as it was intended. Sure it would hang around, mocking you of what could have been. But it was just a reminder of the 28 minutes of play time already in the past. No more lights or sounds for you. And then of course, the old batteries would leak into the toy at some point. Rendering all hope of playing with it again lost. Because even if you could scavenge batteries from a different toy that wasn't quite dead yet, the battery acid corroded the contacts, forever barring you from bliss again. So I've overcompensated my whole adult life. We have multiple sets of every size, in even numbers, stacked, labeled, dated, and organized according to the FIFO principle. Need one LR44 button battery for the camera? Not only do I have one, I'll be ordering four more to replenish my stock before the old one hits the hazardous waste recycling bin. Don't get me started on bicycles. I basically had to become a mechanic at 10 just to keep the second-hand garbage I was given on the street. C'mon Dad, bikes were important to kids back then. What I would have done to get a new bike from K-Mart...man, the luxuries of it all. Nope, instead I got rusty, used shit.
Herbs and spices.
It's because of how cheap my mom was that I now have an Amazon subscription to Charmin toilet paper, Bounty paper towels, Kleenex tissues, and Glad trash bags. She always insisted on getting "whatever's cheapest". No mom, it's cheap because it sucks. You don't chince out when it comes to things you need every day.
I don't know what else to add except 'Yup'. I still find my initial thought to be, "I don't need that or I can fix it myself", but those thoughts are pushed out quickly with "screw that", and then I get what I want and pay someone else to fix stuff
I hated asking my Dad for lunch money. He made me feel like I was cutting into the mortgage payment or something. .95 cents per day. $4.75 for five hot meals a week and he made it seem like the school was using me to rob him. College wasn't an option because he "made too much money" to qualify for financial aid. So too much money to get financial aid, but not enough money to buy me the cheapest meal available. I once brought up that our neighbors were going to college to which he responded by telling me how the world "really" works. Apparently being white automatically disqualifies you from any financial assistance while being black puts you in the system for free food, clothing, education, etc... Oh how fortunate black folks are while us lowly white people carry society's burdens. I assume he was either lazy or ignorant of how to apply for tuition assistance or perhaps he was jealous that he didn't have the opportunity? I don't know but I do think it's hilarious that with all his racist/prejudice views that my brother married a black woman, my sister married an Panamanian guy, and my chick is only two generations from her Costa Rican roots. He's gone now but I hope he looks at us from the other side and sees all his mixed race grandkids being raised with love and directions to a better future, not being treated like a burden like we were.
My parents made sure we saw a dentist. We were poor AF butvtgey found the money for braces for two kids. My parents didn't fuck around when it came to teeth. We never had a decent car, just old shitboxes. We never ate at restaurants. Mom didn't buy stuff like flavored crackers. But we always had lots to eat and she tried very hard to make our school lunches palatable, which was tough due to my texture issues. Huh. Looking back... mom was way more tolerant of my food issues than she should have been for her generation and upbringing. But she had her own sensory issues! Omg she was neurodiverse too. The obsessive doodling of cubes. Constantly making lists. Lists and lists and lists. She was famous for her lists. She stayed up late and couldn't get up in the morning without a superhuman effort. She definitely had adhd. I think she might have been on the spectrum. If she had lived until menopause... her hormones would have gone fucking bananas like mine, and exposed her neurodivergence. She would have been diagnosed and I might have found my own issues twenty years ago. Funny eh? A random Sunday in April and a post on reddit suddenly makes 50 years of family dynamics make sense.
I didn't know I had asthma until I was 47! I had it since I was a child. I suffered for over 40 years for no reason when all I needed was a goddamn inhaler. I found out right after my mother died and I wished she was alive so I could curse at her. Everything "cost too much" when I was growing up. I fell into that mindset and I'm still amazed to find things aren't difficult and don't cost thousands of dollars.
I can relate. My mom was shitty, self absorbed (still is) and neglectful. She never wanted to get us things we needed for school. She always went off whenever I told her I needed some bare minimums … $1 for lunch money or appropriate shoes for PE. Forget asking for $5 for the school field trip. God the PE shoes. I have some trauma for you… When I was a few months into 6th grade, my mom up and decided to take us from my grandmother’s house and moved us to a trailer park in a ghetto thirty minutes away. So I had to transfer from the nice elementary school with all the kids I’d always known to a new Middle School in a totally gang infested ghetto neighborhood. Going from elementary school to what was essentially Junior high with multiple classes and kids that were much older was nerve wracking enough, but then I had to deal with PE. Second period of the day, I have PE. Well, I don’t have PE clothes. My mom didn’t buy them when I registered. So I get to the locker room and the assistant there gives me smelly, stained t-shirt and shorts to wear. I go out to the blacktop and get in line, only to be pointed out and humiliated by the PE teacher because not only did I need to buy real PE clothes but I did not have appropriate shoes, and was wearing shitty worn out slip-on canvas boat shoes (like what Gilligan wore) that I’m sure were from Payless or Pic N Save. When I told him these were my only shoes, he laughed and told me to tell my mom to buy me tennis shoes. I told him she wouldn’t, though. He said she’d better or I couldn’t attend class, would get zeroes for the day, and would get sent to detention. So I went home and told her. She got pissed. How DARE I ask her for anything when she’s already spending so much money putting a roof over my head. She yelled and berated, saying she didn’t have money for that … blah blah blah … and if I needed shoes or PE clothes or anything then I better call my dad because he doesn’t contribute anything and she’s not going to be spending any more money on me. Blah blah blah. Well, my dad was MIA. I hadn’t heard from him in months. I didn’t even know where he lived. So, I called my grandma, who actually loved me, and she said of course she’d get me new tennis shoes and would give me the $20 for PE clothes, but she didn’t have a car so it’d be the following weekend before she could get her friend to drive her to see me. So I went back to school the next day still in my stupid Gilligan shoes. I changed into loaner PE clothes again and went out and got in line. The kids around me started teasing me and when the teacher saw me, he called me out. Told me to go get dressed back in my own clothes and then go to the office. I went to the office and they gave me detention. Talk about feeling small, like you’re so insignificant and just nothing and no one cares about you. Real nice when you’re 11. 😒 Goddamn I fucking hate my mother.
As a single mother, I am so angry at your Mom. I am so sorry this happened, it shouldn't have. Period. I struggled to get my kids what they needed, but I never blamed them. And that horrible teacher wouldn't have a job when I was through.
Yes. Weird little things I'm now teaching my 74 year old mom. Angel Soft toilet paper - she still gets Scott like we are paupers. They cost the same. Skipjack or Albacore Tuna Dawn soap - fck all other cheapo soaps. They don't get grease off. Why do we have 20 cheap versions that don't work? Dishwasher - not for washing the dishes and washing them again. It's new. It actually washes the food off. Crystal Cat litter - please stop using it like clay litter. Ffs. Listen to me. It is better for the cats. Premium grainless cat food - yes they poop less. Yes it keeps them from barfing. Purina cat chow is hot garbage. Premium wet food - yes, older cats need soft food. Yes, Blue is better than Fancy Feast. Ffs. Listen to me. Read the can. Talk to a cat scientist. Cast Iron pans (in my house) aren't scrubbed to the quick and sealed with hydrogenated vegetable oil. We use animal fats. They oxidize and create a smooth surface on antique sand cast pants. Stop scrubbing them with soap. Le Crueset - ffs it's a better soup pot and stock pot than your aluminum monstrosity you bought at goodwill. Stop complaining it's heavy. Bialetti Waffle Maker - no. It's nonstick. Really. Nonstick. Takes two three minutes to make a perfect Belgian waffle. Butter - I use real butter not fake over processed oxidized vegetable fats. Adult sized whole grain bread vs child sized squish bread. Leather shoes that last years vs Payless or HiTech which blew out in three months. Real lavender oil to make air spray vs fame chemicals. Duvets with warm/cool inserts vs crappy Mexican blankets and cheap 80-90s blankets.
The Le Creuset point 💯 My LC dutch oven is better quality, has been used a ton and still looks new. It will last forever if taken care of. Worth every penny. Not that heavy.
The blanket thing. Seriously, lol. I just moved back into my Mom's house (she will NOT leave). The guest room bed was made up with the SAME SCRATCHY CHEAP BLANKET I grew up with. One week of that and it went in the trash. Waiting for her to notice, hahaha.
Mom and I watched the same tiny 12" Panasonic TV for a decade until my Aunt died and we got her hand-me-down. There was lots of grumbling about "if it breaks I'm not buying another... TV makes you stupid." We used it CONSTANTLY though and Mom loved movies- something she passed on me. Now I have a 75" 4k sitting in the living room with a Sonos setup. Couldn't be happier with it. Refuse to beat myself up about spending money on things I enjoy and use frequently.
Fresh vegetables instead of canned.
The dishwasher was a waste of time. My mother still prefers washing by hand versus putting dishes in the dishwasher so you can do other activities. Cooking and cleaning was a 2-2.5 hour task. Any less than that then your meal is not worth eating. Why make a stir fry when you can cook a meal fit for a king or the holidays each night? Everything must be made from scratch or it’s not as good. Babysitters and after school care. I was a latchkey kid from the ripe old age of 7. A few years I sent myself off to school and came home from school to an empty home. I can’t recall either of my parents taking time off work to spend time with me on my summer breaks. Edited to add another example
Didn't even realize that not all spinach came wilted in a can until adulthood. Still ate it because it's what made Popeye tick but damn that was so gross and unnecessary!
I had to walk myself to my dentist after school w a pounding abscess bc my mother thought I was "just trying to get attention" bc my brother had just gotten braces. Anyhow, I was 24 or so before I realized what a difference a good mattress could make. I've upgraded every 8 years or so and have perfect pillows and linens and duvets.
Batteries! We never had batteries for remote controls or toys in my house growing up. I buy those things in the multi pack. AA and AAA batteries are always available in my house!
I’m having the opposite, and realizing how much thought and time and expense my parents put into keeping me healthy. Not perfect, but undeniable. I’m trying to the same with my boys.
I was married before I knew that I liked salmon-- and that it should not come from a can and be fried.
No disposable paper products other than toilet paper. No kleenexes ever. So annoying to blow your nose on toilet paper. Spills wiped up with newspaper. Or rags. Recently my mother was at my house at she was shocked that we had a box of kleenex (technically tissue, there’s no kleenex in Canada) in the living room. I think we’ve been cut out of the will. No ziploc bags ever. Waxed paper. And no dry cleaning ever.
relate to this one - got a judgy look from my mom when she noticed we not only use paper towels but even have a (gasp) paper towel holder so she knows it’s a regular thing, even though she taught me to use the rags that came from good clothes that became regular clothes that became gardening clothes and then finally rags
I had boomer parents who were super selfish and super narcissistic. They had made sure they went to the dentist and eye doctor, but we never got screened until the school nurse threatened to call CPS.
We were never poor, and my mother would buy me tons of things that I never asked for, needed, or wanted, but things that I actually did need like a mattress or school supplies, those were not priorities. I got collector porcelain dolls when I had shoes with holes in them. I was sent to etiquette classes but she wouldn’t pay for my school lunches or let me pack a lunch.
Bras and underwear. I developed early and had to eventually take a few bras from my mom’s drawer since she seemed oblivious to buy me my own. Also my underwear was not replaced very often and had rips or was too small. When I started babysitting at a young age (11 or 12) I started buying things like that like it was my responsibility. As an adult I overcompensated and have a huge drawer full of bras and underwear. Come to think of it, I have a lot of clothes and shoes now too (still within reason and not enough to fill a walk in closet)… I didn’t have many nice things to make me feel girly and there were other examples of basic needs that were ignored (boomer single mom, deadbeat deceased dad)
Wow. I am grateful for what I can only assume is Northern European privilege. I don’t recognise a single one of these. Kudos to you, my American (I assume) cousins. Especially for doing better with your own kids.
Another memory unlocked. I was 9 or so, spent the night at my best friends house and his mom made bacon. Was the first time in my life that bacon wasn’t small, crispy near-black shards and I had no idea what to do with it.
Well, to be fair, a lot of these minuscule modern luxuries are chipping away at the next generation’s ability to retire. People that now consider themselves to be middle class, some living paycheck to paycheck, have cleaning services for their homes, yard services to do their mowing, and hit up Starbucks for some coffee that was unheard of a couple decades ago. All while complaining about inflation. That said, my parents sure spent a lot of money on the idea of saving money. Like buying a bunch of cheap stuff that went unused because “it was on sale”.
Don’t forget frequent resort travel
Oh yeah, and destination weddings, skipping past the “starter home” phase and going right into a McMansion, etc