My parents are probably the weirdest married couple I've ever met. I don't know what it is about their personalities but they just fight about some of the dumbest shit ever. For example, the most classic example is the house thermostat.
Mike is probably the most penny pinching man with a three-figure salary that I know. My father is so ridiculous that he steals ketchup packets and napkins from fast food places. Seriously, we haven't bought napkins in years. At the peak of his thriftyness, we would wait until there was literally nothing but pasta and canned vegetables in the house and then go mass grocery shopping after cutting coupons en masse and grabbing all the sale papers. Then we would go out and hit like five grocery stores to get the best of what each store had to offer. It drove Kelly nuts and eventually rising gas prices stopped those extreme measures, but anyway, you get the point.
In summer the thermostat in my house is usually set to 63 degrees. Kelly likes it to be at 62. They have literally had angry blow-out fights over one goddamn thermostat degree. I'm talking like to the point where they don't speak to each other for a couple of days. Dad gets angry because his argument is that you can't really feel a one degree difference, but your bill will reflect a one degree difference. Kelly, who is going through early pre-menopausal symptoms (ie hot flashes) disagrees on both counts and insists that one degree makes all the difference and that she refuses to 'sweat in her own house'.
So what basically ends up happening is this: Dad leaves at 5am to go to work and doesn't get home until about 3pm. Whenever Kelly makes it out of bed (she is notorious for sleeping in) she will go and turn the thermostat down at least one degree (but probably more) and then turn it up when she leaves for work. Her idea is that Dad never need know. Sometimes she forgets and thats when the argument starts all over again. Literally, the same argument will happen again. You'd think they would learn.
Another constant fight is Mom's lateness. Kelly has some of the worst ADD ever, and it's a partial cause to her chronic tendency to arrive anywhere late. She couldn't be on time to save herself. It used to embarrass me terribly as a kid, because nobody likes being the last kid picked up from school, from activities, etc. Especially because generally she's not just late, she's like 25 minutes late. And then I'd feel bad for making somebody else's parent have to wait for me. Let's just say that I actually made it to my dental appointments on time when I started driving myself. And it's not like we don't try to help her out. We've tried setting all the clocks in the house 20 minutes fast, told all her doctors to call and remind her that her appointment is at least 30 minutes earlier than it actually is, etc. Nope, doesn't really help much.
Dad, on the other hand, is a 'if you're not early, you're late' kind of person. He's almost obsessed with getting places right on time. This mentality comes in handy for doctors appointments and stuff, but when you're going to a party or a family gathering it's awkward being the first people there. Mike cannot for the life of him understand the concept of 'fashionably late'.
So really, everything we do as a family is basically a ticking time bomb. Dad's parents (Grandma & Grandad D) live about 45 minutes away. This is a typical family outing:
Days in advance Dad will tell Mom that he wants to leave at 1:25pm. The get together probably doesn't start until at least 3pm. At 1:25pm Kelly will probably have just gotten out of the shower. It doesn't really help that aside from being late, Kelly has a terrible time making decisions and does everything at the speed of a prehistoric tortoise. She is just really slow in general. So it will probably take her at least another hour to get dressed, do her hair, and pick out jewelry. And that's if she's rushing like mad.
2:30pm will roll around and Kelly will at least be clothed. If it's a good day, she'll be ready to leave (ie she will be dressed with her hair in rollers and she will do her makeup in the visor mirror of the van). If it's not a good day she'll be another 20 minutes.
Mike, of course, wanted to leave at around 2pm, regardless of what time he told Kelly. He gave her a 1:25 start time with some leeway built in, but once it gets past 2pm he starts to get mad. [As an aside, Danny and I were both most likely ready to leave at 1:25pm]. He'll tromp upstairs and start nagging her to get a move on it. By 2:30 they're yelling at each other. It's not like his persistent nagging is helping her get ready any faster. In fact, it probably slows her down since Kelly is incapable of doing two things at once. They'll fight for a few minutes and then Mike will give some sort of ultimatum (like 15 minutes or so) and stomp downstairs. He'll yell at Danny and I to get in the car.
With us in the car, Dad will start the car and grumble to himself. Mike doesn't have a long fuse on the best of days and once he gets mad he stays mad. And then it's like some nasty demon from another dimension takes over his mouth because he does not know when to shut it. Even after a fight is over he will continue to grumble ugly things under his breath and talk to himself. It really only makes things worse. He'll do that while he sits in the car, which is running. My parents will have been married 21 years this April and sometimes I don't understand why he doesn't just accept her lateness as a thing that happens. Or maybe not quite accept it, but stop to seriously work himself up over it. I mean, Kelly has been chronically late for most of her life and after two decades of marriage nothing much has changed. But Mike for some reason just can't get this through his neanderthal skull.
After another 10 minutes of car idling (which drives me nuts, because it's pollutionatory) he will angrily shut off the car and stomp back inside. He will yell something like, "FUCK THIS. I'M NOT GOING" and plop himself in the recliner and turn on ESPN.
That's when they both play the "I'm not going" game. Mike will refuse to go, and then Kelly gets pissed. If she fails to get him to come with us, she'll make me or Danny go in and beg him to go with us. Or if that fails, Kelly will declare that she's not going either. It's really really wack.
What usually happens after this is that we all end up going but Kelly and Mike will argue with each other for the first half of the car trip and then sit in stoney silence for the second half.
It's really weird, and really awkward and totally screwed up, but it's my family and I have to live with it. All I can really do is roll my eyes and slowly shake my head.
Now that I'm older and have actual social skills, I have attempted to mediate several arguments between them. Usually I didn't volunteer for this job, I just got dragged in. Somebody will be looking for validation for their points, and since I'm the only one there (besides Danny, and he doesn't count) I get hooked in. It's really hard to mediate between them because they both want to 'win' the argument. Generally I try to play the fence by validating some of both of their points but also pointing out their own faults. This usually doesn't go over well and then they just get mad at me too. And then everybody is all mad at each other. I just can't win.
Depending on the severity of the fight, they'll be back to normal in a few hours or they won't speak to each other for several days. It's really just a toss up after one of their stupid fights.
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