He Ruined Our Vacation
We were just on a family vacation—until my father-in-law ruined the whole thing in an instant. He just lost his temper at his four-year-old grandson because he ruined his drawing. He then proceeded to throw a temper tantrum and caused our family holiday to be cut short.
Yes, as pathetic as it sounds, we’re all on holiday and my ridiculous father-in-law was sitting on the floor drawing on paper when his bubbly four-year-old grandson came over and playfully drew over his drawing.
My father-in-law is an artist and takes his drawing very seriously. Fine, I get that this incident must have sucked for him. But instead of seeing that the kid is four years old and dampening his response, he completely flew off his rocker, both literally and figuratively.
After yelling and swearing at his grandson, he did the same to his son (i.e. the father of the grandson). He was yelling at him because he allegedly wasn’t disciplining his son. In reality, he was, but my father-in-law didn’t have the mental capacity to see that.
To give some context, there’s my mother-in-law, my father-in-law, my wife, my two-year-old daughter, my brother-in-law, my sister-in-law, and their son and daughter. That was everyone who is on this trip.
The nine of us are all sharing a holiday house, and it’s literally been awesome up till now. The kids absolutely love it, and all but one of the adults are smitten watching the grandchildren, children, nieces, and nephews having a blast.
One of them was having such a blast that he decided to play a trick on granddad, and ruin his drawing! It’s only a drawing, right? Annoying, but kids innocently do that kind of thing all the time, right? His parents are normal responsible parents, and he’s not a bratty kid.
Yet my father-in-law has a big chip on his shoulder about how kids are raised, and how his children and their partners (me included) are all doing everything wrong.
We do this holiday getaway every year, and when our daughter was only a few months old, we had to leave early because my fragile father-in-law couldn’t handle our daughter crying as we were trying to get her to sleep.
We were clearly bad parents and we needed to get her out of bed and put her down again later. It was a big blowout with lots of yelling and swearing.
There’s one common denominator in all this, and it’s my father-in-law. He claims that at the age of 62, he’s too old to change, and that getting angry is a part of who he is. He has severe anxiety issues and sleep problems, but hates medication.
For a brief period when he was on Prozac, it was the calmest time I’ve ever experienced in my life. Honestly, I wish I could just punch him in the face, but I know that this would just be a bad idea for everyone involved. I want what’s best for my daughter and wife.
But when he’s talking at the top of his lungs, not letting anyone else talk, ranting, raving, swearing, cutting other people off, and then yelling “LISTEN TO ME, DON’T INTERRUPT ME!” when someone has the audacity to respond, I secretly dream of walking up to him and punching him as hard as I can.
I’m trying my best to remain calm, but holy cow, what a handful he is to deal with! Story credit: Reddit / Pretty_Amazing