Bitter Enemies
My hassles with my mother-in-law have become somewhat legendary around my friend group. She has been gone now for about 12 years, but sheesh did that gal go down fighting! The scary part is that my own mother was just like her. In fact, they were bitter enemies before my husband and I were even born. This is the reason we did not have a wedding and 44 years later I have never once regretted that decision. Much to my mother-in-law’s disappointment, I never gave her the satisfaction of yelling at her or arguing with her, but my sister is not one to back down from someone acting like a spoiled toddler.
See, my sister has a very unconventional way of dealing with crazy folks. So one day, my sister had come over to my house for a visit. We were watching TV with our kids, so that meant Sesame Street, The Electric Company and Mr. Rogers. (All great shows, by the way.) There was one hand puppet kitty cat on Mr. Rogers that would meow while saying something. For instance, it would say: Meow meow meow friend, meow? When it was asking someone to be its friend. For some odd reason, this hit us both as hilarious and we began doing this to the kids. Like asking: Meow meow meow hungry, meow? We kept it up all afternoon, just being silly. The kids loved it.
Later after dinner, I went to drive my sister home. She wanted to stop for a soda on the way to her house, so we did. To my dismay, my mother-in-law was in the convenience store where we stopped. This woman immediately started being awful to me. She said: “Oh my God…why are you out so late?! (It was 9 pm) What are you even doing here? Does my son know where you are? Are you buying drinks? Does my son know you are out buying drinks? Are you going to drive while in that shape? Where are my grandkids?!” For what it’s worth, we were buying SODA.
Lord, this woman was exhausting. But my sister had the perfect response. Before I could even open my mouth to answer, my sister stepped up and said to her: “Meow meow meow stupid, meow?” My mother-in-law stared at her for a few seconds before stammering, “W…what?” To which my sister said: “Ahh! Meow meow meow, witch meow!” At this point, several other people near us started snickering. Without another word, my mother-in-law turned on her heels and stomped out of the store.
I hadn’t said a single word to her. I hadn’t really even gotten the chance. I took my sister and nephew home after that— my nephew had been off looking at the candy bars in the store and had missed it all. By the time I had gotten home, my mother-in-law had called my husband and had told him my sister and I had been tipsy in public and were also rude to her. He knew better though, so he asked me what had really happened. He laughed so hard after I told him that he had tears in his eyes. To this day, my husband and his brothers will say: ‘Meow meow meow, witch, meow?’ to anyone being unreasonable. Story credit: Reddit / nannylinn62