My parents are mad (lighthearted)

My dad once emerged from the bathroom foaming at at the mouth (literally) and yelling 'bastard!'.He had purchased some original source mint shower gel in the mistaken belief that it was mouthwash.When we asked did he not wonder at how much he'd had to squeeze the bottle to get it to come out, he replied that he'd thought it was just 'good stuff-very viscous'.
He wears moleskin plus fours at all times with thick hiking socks that must be the same colour as his 'pullover'.
He will not eat white foods.Except bread and milk.He says they remind him of boarding school.He is 86 and left boarding school aged 11.
When he was 70 he bought a moped.He got all the gear for it, red helmet, red jacket but for some reason drew the line at motor bike gloves and elected to wear bright yellow marigolds instead.
He is an absolute loon.

Mine refuses to wear her hearing aids on vanity grounds. She was in hospital recently and I had to pre warn the nurses that she nods along and smiles without having a fecking clue what is going on and will therefore agree to anything in advance, but when it comes to it will kick up a fuss as she knew nothing about it.

She will not do online banking. She goes every month to her local branch, takes money out of her current account via the cash machine inside and then goes up to the counter to pay her credit card bill. I have tried and tried to explain that if she just goes straight to the counter they can make the payment without her needing to draw money out first, but she just doesn't understand. She won't use her debit card in shops either, she always gets cash out at the machine at the supermarket first. She will however buy electricals etc on her cc for the added protection. But she also can't work out which way round her card goes in the machine since it went chip and pin so the cashier always has to help her.

if my mum is going out in the evening she will text me and say "Im not taking my phone". Why? I dont understand it!!!

Please tell me I've not killed this thread!

I love this thread so much.

I'm giggling away whilst also thinking, as a PP has said, the things will come to us all I bet!

Some truly bonkers stuff though.

Except silence during Midsummer Murders. That just makes perfect sense. :)

My Dad's washing machine broke three years ago. He refuses to get it fixed or buy another one so he gets packs of pants / socks and vests from M&S and throws them all away.

To be fair, when my mother was alive she hoarded clothes. When my sister and I and moved out, the entire four-bed family home was converted into cupboards, shelves and wardrobes to house clothes for two pensioners, and he owns about two hundred shirts, trousers and jerseys so he doesn't need to go to the launderette that often but... for the love of God, WHY go at all?

And then he complains that he's a poor (private final salary) pensioner. AAARRGGHH!

When I was early 20s, I was seeing a boy who rode a motorbike but always brought his car to pick me up as I was too scared to go on the bike. One day he turned up with a shiny new Fireblade and a spare helmet. I was explained yet again why I didn't want to go on it when DM appeared in her gardening clothes and said, "Well if you're not going on it, I will" and off they went
When DF came home 15 minutes later and asked where DM was, I told him. He simply asked if I thought she'd be back for dinner...
20 odd years later, they are worse no different. Their motto is that sign: Growing old is inevitable but growing up is optional.

I've been howling at some of these posts, so I've nominated the thread for Classics!

Lol my mum does "touch parking" revving the engin and bumping into the other cars till she is in the space :s

My mum warms the cat dishes when the weather is cold. 'Well how would you like to eat cold food off a cold plate?'

Her sister is the most terrible driver around, and parallel parks by just aiming her car roughly in the right direction, then shunting back and forwards whilst revving the fuck out of the engine using the bumpers of the parked cars as 'guides'

My ex MIL still hasn't quite got the hang of mobile phones and voicemails will include bleeping where she's still jabbing away at the keypad, swearing at the TV and talking to the cat.

Oh and the landline needs to be plugged in as it's cordless, I keep it switched off all the time as otherwise I'd have to talk to people

Oh my god. I'm only in my 30s but I do so many of these things I turn off everything at the wall at night, including the tv, router but of course not the fridge freezer. I draw the curtains when I'm out or when I'm having a sofa nap , keep all the doors locked all the time, close internal doors downstairs at night. Hate wearing new shoes as they'll get mucky..

My parents are the normal ones aren't they blush]

You know those sinks that have a tiny draining sink just big enough for a tea cup next to them? My gran always used that sink for washing up to "save water". She would only use the big sink when there was a big family meal - although her definition of a big family meal meant more than 8 of us (we still had to use the small sink for that).

Also one day a scout came to the door to collect milk bottle tops for some project (this was a long time ago) probably expecting to get half a dozen or so. My grandad gave him bags and bags of them! Turned out he had been waiting for this moment for years!

HowBadIsThisPlease
My parents have a very annoying dribbly shower. you stand in it, cover yourself in shampoo and soap, and then take about 45 minutes trying to get it off by distributing individual drops over water one by one over your body, centimetre by centimetre. This despite having had the bathroom done relatively recently.
I was horrified (and yet somehow not at all surprised) to find out from my sister that there is nothing wrong with the water pressure, and the new shower was fitted with a really good shower head that produced powerful jets. It was taken off and replaced with this one that barely seeps water "to prevent flooding the bathroom if water escapes".

You could always take your own shower head next time you stay.......

I absolutely love this thread.

Love cluckingham palace

Love this thread! My granny had a mobile phone (never switched on obviously) with an address book permanently strapped to it with an elastic band. She would make cream of tomato soup by making a cup a soup and adding squirty cream on top.
Being a passenger in my other granny's car was the most terrifying experience. She could barely see where she was going and would beep at everyone for no discernible reason, e.g. Yes they're walking on the pavement but they may be thinking about stepping into the road. She also left the very formal answer machine messages as if she were talking to an operator, e.g. This is Mrs xx, I would like to leave a message for my granddaughter miss xx
MIL on FaceTime is always hilarious. She always has to FaceTime not just ring and we rarely get to see more than a square inch of her face. one FaceTime she kept complaining that she couldn't see herself. We were trying to say it was us she was supposed to see but she just wanted to make herself bigger and was getting really cross with it!

Oh god fellout I hope not! Thing is, df is actually an amazing cook, but he does love to experiment, with varying results! I'm not going to forward your suggestions on as I can guarantee next Sunday we'd be faced with port soaked pineapple upside down cake with chardonnay custard or something! He actually made pears in port a couple of weeks ago! But they kept going mushy apparently...so he made it into pear port crumble!

My df announced during Sunday tea tonight

"I have decided I'm going to create my own puddings. They shall be bastardisations of other people's recipes"

It turns out that basically he's just going to soak a lot of fruit in port and put them in various cakes. His new favourite thing is soaking fruit in port. Baked apples soaked in port stuffed with sultanas soaked in a different port were interesting to say the least. Then he put one in a freezer bag for me to take home "for later....Don't tell your sister"

My DH is soooo going to go this way. He's fairly anal now at 46 so God help me by the time he gets to 60!

at "it was a beautiful feckin service"

Also the grandma with the Formica countertop....

Whatamess, I cried reading about the pizza !!

This thread is just brilliant! Since I posted yesterday about my lovely Dad, I have thought of some other bonkers things. My Irish Catholic Nan used to go to the church services of weddings and funerals of people she didn't know. When asked about whose wedding or funeral she'd attended she'd get all sniffy and say "I don't know, but it was a beautiful feckin' service" :-D. I also remember one year when she had gone on and on about not having a "decent set of luggage". So my parents bought her a really lovely set of Samsonite luggage for Christmas to which she responded "what do I need feckin' luggage for, I go nowhere, see no-one"....

I still cringe about a date I had when I was 15 my daughter would never have been allowed to do this ever in a million years. A very wealthy young man who drove a Porsche at 17 and took me to the Hippodrome in London (despite my age ) and a lovely West End restaurant. He drove me home and walked me down the drive, went in for a kiss at which point my Dad flung open the front door, dragged me in virtually by the scruff of the neck, said "thank you very much" and slammed the door. I was horrified. He had been standing by the spy hole for God knows how long. Weirdly, a second date didn't materialise....!! My Dad said that he'd saved me from "Greeks bearing gifts". FWIW, he wasn't Greek and didn't bring a gift .

Lastly, my lovely late Mum. She had a very close relationship with her sister who was 10 years younger. When my Mum died, my Aunt helped me with the difficult task of clearing out her many wardrobes. As we were pulling things out, Aunt was saying "that's mine, oh and that's mine, she was a cow" and laughing. Turned out that every time my Aunt had had a clearout and had bags ready for Oxfam, my Mum used to "volunteer" to drop them off, and keep the lot! What was a really difficult day descended into tears of laughter. Oxfam won out in the end....!!!

Both DM and PIL switch of everything.

But DM also has an odd habit of bringing her own sheets and pillow when she comes to stay.

No duvet or duvet cover though.

I provide freshly washed bedding and four pillows but clearly they are wrong.

She says she doesn't want to give me extra washing.