He Forced My Husband to Play Sports
To preface, I’m a female who happens to like sports. Mainly hockey and American football, but I’ll watch basketball and baseball in the playoffs, and I understand baseball better than the average girl thanks to my idiot of an ex. My husband likes sports too, but I’m definitely the bigger “fan.”
We also both played hockey, and my husband was also forced to do Little League. Who forced him, you ask? My one and only father-in-law, who I lovingly refer to “Hagar the Horrible.”
Hagar forced my husband to play Little League until my mother-in-law put her foot down, because my husband would come home crying over the fact that he hated it so much. Hagar was the coach and screamed at his players non-stop, so go figure.
When his mother got involved, he was finally allowed to quit. Anyway, point being, we both know and like sports, me possibly even more than my husband.
Hagar considers yacht racing a sport, so he claims that he does sports all the time, even though the owner of the boat and his crew are the ones doing the work while Hagar just makes drinks and snacks and sometimes gets to steer for a couple of seconds.
He is also, obviously, all-knowing about all sports, including ones he didn’t even know existed until the Olympics. It turns into one of the many things I’ve given up trying to correct him on, and I just roll my eyes at him being confused about why the sport we’re watching isn’t being played by his rules.
My husband and I randomly decided to go to a baseball game this last Sunday, partly to get away from Hagar and his obnoxious new girlfriend, and partly because I’d never been to the nearby stadium and the tickets were cheap.
In my opinion, baseball is much more entertaining at the game than watching it on TV, but I’ve also been spoiled by some pretty awesome stadiums. The game was exciting, the stadium was as great as I’d heard, and we had some amazing dumplings afterward.
The next day, Hagar decided to try and be an idiot jerk about it. Not really sure why, since he knows I like sports. Him: “Hey Daughter-in-law, did you like the game?” Me: “Yeah, it was–” Him: “Did you understand what was going on? I’m sure it was confusing.”
Me: “…Yes, I–” Him: “I’m surprised my son talked you into going.” I was pretty over it at this point and was just going to make a non-committal grunt noise in his general direction, but my husband piped up at this point.
My Husband: “Actually, she is the one who wanted to go. She picked out the seats and paid for them. We had a great view and the game was a lot of fun!” So I decided to chime in just to shame Hagar a little further, since he was already taken aback.
Me: “Yeah, I’ve never seen so many pitching changes, and we even got to see a splash homer. The ump was being a little bit generous with his strike zone though. Dinner was great too. Too bad you couldn’t come.”
Hagar walked away grumbling and seemed upset the rest of the night. I know it was sort of because he was politely told to screw off after talking down to me, but also because the reason he couldn’t come was that there was a major regatta that I didn’t ask about and his boat didn’t do well in it.
We unfortunately didn’t know about it until after I bought the tickets, or I would’ve picked a different weekend when he was actually going to be around. Small victories. Hagar also lies constantly, but he’s not very good at it.
There was one day, though, where his lies were even more laughable than usual. Basically, everything that comes out of his mouth has to be taken with a grain of salt, and if my husband and I are genuinely curious about what the truth is, we try and ask someone else who was actually there whenever possible.
Well, on this one particularly bad day, Hagar decided to try and lie to my husband about events that had allegedly happened the night before. He thought I wasn’t listening, and so he lied despite the fact that I was there for everything that he was trying to lie about.
First off, he tried telling my husband that our neighbor’s wife came over and told him that the lawn had caught fire, but they put it out. I say neighbor’s wife because she doesn’t live there herself and only comes over when the kids and grandkids come over to use the pool and BBQ.
So she probably wasn’t there to begin with on a random Wednesday night. Hagar then said that he had to talk to the authorities, because apparently, another neighbors’ lawn had caught fire, so they were investigating arson in the neighborhood.
My husband is supremely confused at this point and asks Hagar where we were when all this was going on, and Hagar says that we were in bed.
My husband then asks what time it was, because unless we seriously were erased from the world, we would have heard the neighbor and then the officers knocking on the door and then having a conversation with Hagar.
Hagar is practically deaf and can barely hear his TV unless it’s at full volume, so I doubt he would have heard the door, especially given the circumstances. Hagar said it was at around 6:00 or 7:00 in the evening.
It was at this point that I had to leave to crack up, and a minute later Hagar dragged my husband outside to “examine the arson damage.” So, besides probably lying about the neighbor and the officers coming, there are sooooo many other lies he told that I seriously don’t know how he thought he could get away with it.
He was sort of nice to me earlier that week and had taken me to a doctor’s appointment. I’m pretty sure that my husband threatened to close down the family shop and take me himself if Hagar didn’t do it.
You may ask why Hagar wasn’t at the shop himself. It’s because he always goes sailing on Wednesdays. It was also his friend’s birthday this week, who is the owner of the boat, so he didn’t even get home until close to 9:00 at night.
That’s right, the jerk WASN’T EVEN HOME when he claims that my husband and I were in bed and he was talking to an officer about arson.
My husband has it in his cell phone’s call log that Hagar called at 8:48 to say he was home and ask if there was anything to eat. My husband and I didn’t even start cooking our dinner until around 7:00, and I promise that we did not do it in our sleep.
But it gets even more ridiculous. When he dragged my husband outside to “examine the evidence,” my husband was able to point out that it wasn’t even the lawn, it was a planter box that was slightly charred.
The same planter box that I tried to point out to Hagar was smoldering when we were leaving for the doctor, but he ignored me repeatedly and got irritated because I was taking too long to get in the car.
It was smoldering not because of arson, but because Hagar put a bunch of wood shavings from the bowl he made for his friend’s birthday in it, then decided to toss his still-lit smoke on top.
Thankfully the wood he used doesn’t burn very well, or it might have actually caught fire. When I got home from the doctor in my Uber, that was the first thing I checked, and it had put itself out without any apparent intervention from the neighbors.
I seriously don’t understand why Hagar even brought it up, because it’s not like he was the hero in his own made-up version of events. I didn’t even think to mention it to my husband, because, whatever, Hagar was an idiot again and nothing really happened.
Hagar also could have made it slightly more believable. He could have just said it was the neighbor who used to be a firefighter, not his wife. I guess he said that because my husband and I could actually have gone and asked the neighbor, but the wife is hardly ever around and I’ve never even talked to her.
He also could have left the officers out of the story. He could have at the very least said they came by at like 10:00 or 11:00, when he was actually home and my husband and I might have been asleep.
And most of all, why say it was the lawn, THEN DRAG MY HUSBAND OUTSIDE TO SHOW HIM IT WAS LITERALLY NOT THE LAWN?!?! If catching Hagar in a lie accomplished anything ever besides screaming and cursing and various threats from him, this definitely would have been a prime time to do it.
But it never does, so I just had to go laugh, and my husband just patted him on the back and gave him an “Okay, Dad. Sure.” I wonder what his next work of fiction will be. Oh, and then there was the small matter of Hagar deciding that inappropriate slurs would be a good reaction to advice.
I wasn’t there for this, but I trust that my husband wouldn’t just make this stuff up, and I don’t think the awesome guy who got called the offensive slur would do so either. A customer at Hagar and my husband’s workplace remarked that Hagar’s dog smells terrible.
She really is in terrible shape, and nothing I say, or anyone says, will convince Hagar to take her to the vet. But Hagar got upset that maybe he was losing business because of his dog.
So “Awesome Guy” (AG), who is an employee too, and also happens to be half black and half Native American, pulled Hagar aside and said something along the lines of “Your dog is literally rotting and has needed to go to the vet for years.”
And what does Hagar do? In front of the customer he was afraid of losing because his stinky dog tried to say hi? He screams out: “You’re just a dumb (insert offensive slur here), what do you know?” My husband says the customer promptly walked out. Hagar has slurs for everyone, by the way.
My ex-roommate, whose family home is next to George Clooney’s in Italy? They get a slur. That’s wrong all around. I get called a slur for Irish people by Hagar, even though my name is severely Scottish, and my background is more a combination of German and Jewish than Irish. Story credit: Reddit / _felisin_