AIBU to be fed up with my in-laws' reverse one-upmanship?

See also every MN wedding thread ever, where somebody will claim that they spent thruppence happenny on their wedding, wore an old bin bag they found blowing about in the park instead of a wedding dress, the reception consisted of the groom handing round a bag of crisps in the registry office car park, “and everyone said it was the best wedding they’d ever been to so I don’t know why modern couples spend a fortune on an actual ceremony and reception”

You need to reverse Elevenerife the shit out of that.

“You’d sit on a Tesco bag no we’d only be ones for giving Aldi bags a go”

”No air mattresses for us we were thinking of sleeping the babies directly in the wet ground”

“Sailing to Portugal, we were thinking of doing the full Camino de Santiago starting in the Pyrenees walking all the way down to Portugal once we can get the toddler into his new walking boots”

I’d have great fun with that shit but I’m pretty petty 😂🤣

You should give a really mad reply every single time!lol Tell them you're considering hitch hiking to Portugal with the kids and next time you go camping you will all lie under a hedge as you enjoy being at one with nature

wait til you go to Tenerife

they’ll be straight onto booking themselves to Ninerife

😂

That Yorkshire men video needs adding to your family WhatsApp group with “🤣🤣🤣 sae this and immediately thought of you!” Then every time they start you can chime in “a hahaha- you’re being like those Yorkshire guys from Monty Python! Aren’t they funny children! Hahaha!” Every time. Get them Monty Python Yorkshiremen t shirts for Xmas. Keep it going until everyone calls them it!

Perhaps they have! 😁

OMG this is a bit like my inlaws. If I do anything they will say why are you doing it like that?! SIL does it like this and she research's everything so she is right. SIL is their daughter. 🙄You should do what she does! SIL was using dummies for her children, I didn’t want to. Both SIL’s kids now have protruding teeth and need braces. My kids are fine. I rest my case.

I bet they are doh g it to wind you up and are laughing about it afterwards. 🫠

There's also the comedy sketches by French and Saunders with the catch phrase Stuff and Nonsense. Something about loosing a leg and too much fuss was made of it, so they just carried on doing whatever they were doing.

In my late 20s I stopped feeling the need to have any discomfort that I can afford not to have. People's definition of comfort varies, but whatever ours is, we should revel and yes, luxuriate in it. I love being comfortable.

My MIL does an altered version of this. In her version luxuries are needed/fair enough for her whilst the rest of us are wasteful and profligate if buying anything vaguely normal. I remember her telling us we were wasting money when we got fitted bookshelves as some bricks and planks would have done the job. We had a baby and a toddler at the time. We were also not asking for her opinion nor funding re said bookshelves. Another occasion she'd been going on and on about this new restaurant she visited with "the girls". When DH and I decided to go out for a meal she asked why we didn't save money by having some fish fingers (wtf?) at home. I kid you not.

Family bingo all the way now. The kids are adults and teens and we all know the mantra. "You don't need ..... I need .....!"

Spot on! Like 'we lived in a cardboard box in the middle of a roundabout'!!!!

I do hope you peg them up to dry between uses?
You mean you only use a teabag once?
We use ours until they are dried out and beige and the pot tastes better with every use.

Yes we have an in-laws bingo card and it really helps us tolerate their nonsense. Either that or cultivate an indulgent chuckle whilst say ‘How ridiculous’ in response to their suggestions.

I don’t hear Monty Python or Blackadder, I hear Harry Enfield… ‘You don’t want to do it like that, you want to do it like this!!!’

I think you need to lose your temper properly with them “Look can you please stop going on about driving. It sounds crap to me and we’d rather fly. I don’t scrutinise every choice you make and bang on about it for half an hour so please show me the same courtesy. Just give it a rest and change the topic.” Try not to make it personal- make it factual.

Either that or tell your DH that they are driving you up the wall and you’re worried you’ll properly lose your temper with them so you’re avoiding them for a while. He can take the kids to see them on his own or they can come to you (you’ll be out for the duration obviously).

My favourite BA sketch.

Someone was going on about something the other day and all I could hear in my head was "turnip, a turnip..."

Why do you take them so seriously? When they start telling their stories, why not interrupt and embellish it for them.
Take the piss out of them in a gentle, loving, tongue in cheek sort of way.

"Oh yes, you drove for 24 hours with no sleep, and no engine either. Such a luxury, the modern combustion engine. Derrick used his teeth to gnaw a hole in the car's floor so he could propel it forwards Flintson-style. Yaba daba do. His feet were worn up to the knee by the time you got there but you didn't need to go to the expense of buying a plaster for his suppurating stumps. You just wrapped them in tesco bags. Bliss"

Mine are the other way around, always telling us we should stay at home. Shaking their heads pityingly saying it's such a shame for young people having to leave the house. If the dc mention we are going somewhere we get told we should stay at home because it will probably rain and there will be traffic. And they say traffic in a kind of hushed whisper as if they are talking about something terrible.

Why didn’t you say ‘oh I love flying, a glass of wine,a good movie ‘
ditto for other stuff -I love to sit by my tent sunbathing in My bikini and chat up the chap in the next tent etc

Agree with this. Possibly with the occasional add-in of "oh dear, gosh, I wish I could be more like you [sigh]..."

You have my sincere sympathy though, @GreenPoppies - this would seriously boil my p~ss. I used to have a colleague like this. Awful. If you ever watched the League of Gentlemen and Pauline, the Re-Start Officer, she was that woman down to a very tee. Even the glasses and shade of lipstick. But whatever anecdote was related, she would overtalk you with relations of similar scenarios in which her son or her dog (usually the dog) had done it bigger, better and bolder than us. Deeply tedious, but we all knew what was coming whenever anything was said - many an eye was rolled.

What does your DH think? Is he in awe of their magnificence or with you in silent fury? Realistically, the answer is to not go away with them, or discuss holidays or trips out in any detail beyond the very basics. Who is it that's telling you to "shut up if you can't be nice"? Because that is very, VERY unkind and I'd keep an eye on that. You do not have to put up with being humiliated and abused just because they are grandparents. Being a grandparent is not an automatic free pass for arseholery. Visits can be stopped, or limited, or curtailed the minute nastiness erupts. That is not being overly-dramatic. Some bullies do it with a smile - and what you have described does sound like bullying and deeply unfunny. The colleague I mentioned above, like LoG Pauline, was also a vicious bully. She was one of the reasons I left that job.

Assuming it's not symptomatic of a wider and developing problem, let "Chateau de Chasselas" be your watchword. Anytime it starts up, just smile and say "chateau de chasselas" as sweetly as you dare.

Best wishes to you. x

Just say laugh and say 'You two are such a hoot!'

Or play a tiny, tiny violin.

Totally this. We’ve got an aged relative who, if you’ve been to somewhere or done something, not only has she been too, or her daughter has, but she did stuff you couldn’t POSSIBLY have done. Tenarife, Elevenarife.

She is well travelled and maybe some of it is true but some seems rather far fetched, and we have no way of knowing if she actually did any of it, or just wants the one-upmanship. After all these years, we assume it’s the latter because it’s so predictable.

She also is very disparaging of anyone who watches TV. So one Christmas we asked if she’d been to Craggy Island, it has a rather famous parochial house that was on TV once. Yep, she had. Best thing was, another relative didn’t know our game, but recognised exactly what we were doing and played along!

(yes I know you can actually go but there is NO WAY she’d have even heard of Father Ted)

It’s hilarious. Honestly, turning it into a game for yourself really does make the difference.

I would definitely one up them back in the Yorkshire Men style.

'You sat on Tesco bags? Ooooooh luxury! What's wrong with Aldi bags? Too good for Aldi, are we?'

People who do the Oneupmanship thing are known as elevenerifers so let’s call them ninerifers 🤷🏼‍♀️