Remember @MaineLonghorn- “Forward” is a pace!
I was born with a minor cardiac defect, but when I was a child no one was doing open heart surgery. I finally had it corrected when I was 29. Two incredibly stupid comments:
From a young woman I worked with: “I can’t believe you’re having heart surgery! If I were in your shoes, I’d probably move to California to avoid it!” Wha . . . .?
And then I was at the dentist. Both the dentist and the technician had their fingers in my mouth. I had just mentioned the surgery to them and told them I needed the surgery because of a congenital defect. The technician asked, “Were you born with it?” Oy . . . .
@MaineLonghorn I ran long distance track in high school with friends and keep in shape. And I was sooo slow. My coach walked over to my parents and they all agreed my form was fabulous but I looked like I was running in slow motion.
In the 80s, I worked in the south in a law office. One day I was asked “Why don’t you Yankee women care about the way you look?”
The saddest part is every day I styled my hair, applied makeup, and dressed nicely. I thought I was fitting in pretty well!
@college_query, that is one reason I am very happy to have moved from Texas to Maine!
Like @4kids4us , I have a larger family - 5 kids. The reality is that neither H’s sister nor mine has children and we wanted our kids to have more than one sibling since we are each fairly estranged from our one and only sibling. Anyway, the order of my kids is boy, girl and then 3 more boys. Many times, when I tell people I have 4 sons and a D, they say something like, oh, you kept trying till you got the girl. When I say, no, she’s actually the second oldest, I get comments like “Don’t you think that’s an awful lot of children?” or “Why would you keep on going after you already had a boy and a girl?”
@anomander There is/was a law in my state that everyone in the shopping party must have an ID if there is a liquor purchase. It is rarely enforced but if a store has recently been fined they can be very strict. I had a cashier at a grocery store refuse to ring the wine because I had one of my teenagers with me. Some stores put up signs to notify customers of their adherence to the law.
Once, I was talking to the mother of one of D’s K classmates, who looked Italian and had an Italian surname. I had not yet met her H or her older sons. She commented that D didn’t look like me and I said that she so resembles H that I actually have a framed side by side photo of each of them at about age 4 making the same face and using the same body language. I then said that her D resembled her and asked if that bothered her H. She asked if I had met her sons yet. When I said no, she said, well, they are Korean and adopted. So, is my D, but she’s from Central America. I felt like an idiot and said so. She was very gracious and said, actually, my D does look like me, I just assumed you knew she was adopted because we are very open about it and even had a day when I came in and told the kids about it. My D hadn’t mentioned it…
I mentioned above that I have 4 sons and a D. After the youngest son was born, D, who was 7, kept asking for a sister. One day, at oldest son’s baseball game, a family came in with a newly adopted D from China. My D went over the the mom and said, “your baby is beautiful, if you get tired of her, can you please give her to my mommy. I want a sister.” Fortunately, I knew the family and the mom just laughed and told D that when she got older, she could babysit but that they weren’t going to give their D away. My D is in her late 20’s now, not interested in having kids, but wants to adopt.
Seems like a lot of us have similar stories.
Both DH and I have dark hair. When DS was born and he finally got hair it was nearly white. We had a neighbor he frequently told DH he should get a paternity test. Funny thing is that son now looks more like DH than the oldest (acts like him too).
Friend of Mexican descent had a similar, random genetic trait where her son was the only light skinned, white blond kid among the grandkids. But among her generation cousins, there’s also been two blondes. This kid is now the picture of the Indonesian husband/father. Her son was the older child and she got lots of questions.
I had big babies and carried large. When I was full term with my 3rd I was running into Target with my older 2. Middle one was toilet training and had to go so we were in a bit of a rush. A lady coming out of Target took one look at me and her mouth kind of dropped open and she asked, “are you having TWINS?” and I said, “no, just one.” She followed up with, “if you were having twins, then you’d have FOUR CHILDREN!” … as if no one ever did such a thing. I just nodded and kept going.
This wasn’t said to me… but about me. In June, we had a memorial lunch for my mom who’d recently passed away. My sister-in-law, who admittedly has mental illness issues, came for it, but unexpectedly left early. I’ve known her for forty years, and she has shared many holidays/events with my mom, so she knew her well. About a month later, I realized I hadn’t heard anything from her and realized she’d blocked me on FB. She then started messenging my H–her brother–to tell him “she was extremely angry at me because i hadn’t spent enough time with her–at my mom’s funeral, essentially. That I’d sat at a different table (with cousins and other seldom-seen family) and deliberately ignored her.” Um, no. Also mad that she “didn’t get to hold my D’s baby as much as other people did” (maybe if she hadn’t left early she should would have had more chance.) Anyway, she is slandering me all over the place for dissing her…at my mom’s funeral.
Funny thing was, I was thinking the group she was sitting with looked like way more fun, but I wasn’t going to snub family who had loved mom. I hope this will resolve eventually, but it sure stings now.
When I was young, a new family moved in behind us. When one of the kids found out we were Jewish, she asked me where my horns were.
I finished grad school with a decent job lined up, and a year later I ran into a classmate who was a year behind and looking for work. He told me, “You know, no one expected much from you (cheddarcheese), but the expectations are very high for me. I can’t just accept any job like you did.” I was actually a pretty good student so I still wonder what was going on there. Years later I can see on LinkedIn that he had a series of ok jobs then left the profession.
[Not said to me but to a friend] When my kids were little, we were friendly with a family of orthodox jews. One evening, after spending time in there home, my oldest solemnly announced that he had figured out the difference between being orthodox and us: “they’re allowed to eat ON THE SOFA.”
My older son was born in December 1984 and I took three months off from work. When I returned, more than one person asked me if I had found someone to watch the baby.
I always wanted to answer, “No, I just left him in his crib with a few bottles and some extra diapers. He’ll be fine.”
When I did something that reminded my paternal grandmother of my father she would say “You came by that honestly”. It took me years to realize what she was saying and how creepy it sounds.
I say “came by it honestly” to my kids all the time. I’ve never thought it was creepy.
My H doesn’t not like to travel and will do almost anything to avoid staying in a hotel. My D said the same thing (I don’t mind staying in a Hotel) and I remarked that she got that from her dad.
When D21 was a baby, I met my sorority sister at a local park with our kids. As we were pushing them on the swings, she looked at my daughter and said, “My goodness, she looks just like you, except she’s beautiful!”. Um, thank you??? LOL
When my D was a toddler, I was frequently asked if her hair (red, with spiral curls/ringlets) was natural. I was always tempted to reply “No, it’s dyed and she has a perm.”