the adorable sweetness of my granddad's brainwrongness
My granddad used to leave pudding out in the garden.

Slightly mental in itself, of course. When asked why, he responded:

"It's for the grey squirrels"

Not just squirrels, though of course that's somewhat banana-brained in itself, but specifically grey ones.

And why might that be, granddad?

Bless his fucked-up excuse for a mind, he was under the impression that grey squirrels were simply elderly red squirrels.

And being elderly, they most likely wouldn't be able to chew nuts as well as in their youthful red-haired days. So a nice soft pudding seemed the obvious solution.

My parents were apparently so in 'awww' of this adorable expression of senility, that they never corrected him and he continued preparing roly polies, spotted dick and rice pudding for the 'old dears' until he died.

Bless!
(Confused, would we? doesn't know what time it is at, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 14:21, Reply)

Ah, my boyfriends mother
This is really really long, because she's really really crazy...

She can be quite fun to hang out with, and you can definitely be more open with her than with my mother. She once told me that I'd be really fun stoned, not that she was advocating drug use or anything...

This goes both ways, though. I was browsing in a furniture store with her once, and she starting rating the beds based on how kinky the sex on them could be without collapsing or breaking them. This included a short rant on the benefits of old brass beds and canopy beds, because they're so much more versatile. I remind you, this is my boyfriend's MOM!

Unfortunately, not all of her psychoses are as amusing. A few years ago, our landlord asked us to shampoo our carpets. Fair enough, we have 4 cats, so they weren't exactly spotless. So, we mentioned to her that we were planning on renting a shampooer. She panics that we might rent a steamer instead, as according to her they'll permanently alter the carpet fibers and you'll destroy the carpeting and it'll never stay clean again, because steam is EVIL. So, what does she do? She goes online, researches for weeks, and buys a shampooer. I know what you're thinking, it's very nice of her to do that for us, and why are we calling her crazy? Well, for one, we were content to rent one and be done with it, and also, she had a shampooer in her basement, that she didn't want to lend us as we couldn't spread the contaminants in our rug to her house. She has hardwood floors.

So, she buys the shampooer, then gets on the phone and starts bargaining with the wholesale carpet shampoo manufacturer, who's legally only allowed to sell to professional cleaning companies, and convinces them to sell her a few cases of shampoo. She brings it to our apartment, and decides that the kitchen is too dirty, so we have to clean the kitchen first, so we don't track dirt over our clean carpets. So what does she do? She stays at our place for 3 days scrubbing our kitchen, also putting us to work (keeping in mind that we're both very busy with work and school) on useful chores like washing the refrigerator. This makes her realize that our pantry could also use some organization. Cue two day break while she drives to every Walmart in Chicago looking for ways to maximize our storage potential. She comes back with three different spice racks, a bunch of different shelving units, and spends another two days organizing the pantry. But what did she find? VEGETABLE OIL! Well, since vegetable oil can kill you, she insisted on throwing away all our oil and buying canola instead. Now, neither she nor we are healthy eaters in general, although we try, but I hardly think that replacing one oil with another oil is gonna make that much difference.

After the pantry, she attacked our bedroom. Another three days at our apartment, going through my clothes (including my unmentionables), then she brings them all over to her house to wash them, and brings them back. She uses this as an excuse to stay another three days. This time, she's emptying and organizing the closets, putting in new shelves, of course, and deciding for us where we want to store all of our stuff. She also worked through the nights, surviving on coffee alone, which meant that my boyfriend often passed out on the couch, so he could wake up for work at 5:30am, while I just made do curled up in a pile of laundry on the bed while she talked at me all night.

It's been about a month now, and the carpet hasn't seen a drop of shampoo.

During this, she also decided to put up curtains in our kitchen, bedroom and bathroom. The first curtains she got for the bathroom were pretty tacky, but luckily for us, our roommate burnt them down. She replaced them with a set I really liked, and I made a point of letting her know how much I liked them. Next week, she brings over yet another set of curtains (actually, two identical ones, with different styles of valance, so we can try them all out)), with fish on them, because she knows we like fish. I was already happy with the curtains I had! But these matched better, and also went well with the new toilet seat she bought us (nothing wrong with the old one, but this one had fish on it).

Still had dirty carpets, at this point. All of these activities also involved 3 day stays at our house.

At this point, she decided that I needed a new wardrobe. So, she went out and bought bags and bags of clothes and brought them to the apartment for me to try on. This eventually morphed into my having to go to the stores with her. Usually in the middle of midterm exams or something, too.

The boyfriend made the mistake of mentioning, as guys do, that a fancy new tv sure would be nice. We both realize that there's no way it's gonna happen, but this inspires her to sit on my computer, looking up tv's through the night, and trying to tell me, when I'm trying very hard to go to bed for class the next day, all about the different technology available. I couldn't seem to convince her that as long as there was a picture, and it was in color, I was happy. Also that we really don't have the money for a tv, ours works fine, and he's just doing the typical guy wanking over plasma screens thing. Unfortunately, no new tv appeared.

By this point, it was starting to get nice and warm out, so we dug out the grill. But our grill wasn't good enough. We HAD to have a propane grill, because grilling with charcoal a few times a year will give us CANCER. So she spent another week researching, then spent $200 on a gas grill for us. Very nice, except that if you're gonna grill on gas, you might as well just dangle a hotdog over the fucking stove, and save the trip down the stairs. Also, there are other things we really would have preferred to use $200 for.

We also cooked indoors a lot. One night, we couldn't decide between the 4 of us what to eat. I think it was simply a matter of what side dish we wanted. This sparked a half hour long tirade about how his grandmother escaped from the nazis on foot, and god knows what she survived on (strong hints of cannibalism), and how horrible it was, and here we were bitching about fucking potatoes, and just fucking pick something and eat it, you eat to live, not live to eat! Funny, as his grandmother was quite a picky eater...

Finally, though, after literally months of this, and 3 uninvited, consecutive nights a week at our apartment, we actually took the shampooer out of the box. We rearranged all the furniture, and got it going, but she wasn't satisfied, so she went online and bought a second shampooer. The plan was that she'd use the new one to shampoo, and the other one to suck up the water. She spent about 2 weeks at our house shampooing, and went over most of the apartment twice.

This is already obscenely long, but I've actually left out a lot. Like the new radiator caps. And the rubber strip at the bottom of the front door. And the three new doorbells.... She also panicked because she convinced herself that the lightbulb on one of our fishtanks would give us skin cancer. The tank isn't even in the living room, where we spend most of our time. I think you get the idea, don't you?

Oh, and she also called literally 6 times a day, leaving pissed off messages if we didn't pick up, and then called him at work and got mad if he wouldn't talk to her there.

To wrap up, my boyfriend can be tactless. If anybody should be used to is, it's his own mother, right? After all, who's in charge of teaching a young lad tact? So, after a few gentle hints that maybe she could give it a rest, he got a little more snippy about her harassment. So, we'd have situations like when we asked her to leave after 3 days once, and she started screaming and crying about how fucking ungrateful we are, and if we love her, the least we can do is at least watch this one movie with her, and then she'll be "out of our way." Finally, one day, she was having problems with the gas company at her house (bills still being sent to her recently deceased mother's house in Florida), and we told her that if her gas was shut off she could stay at our place. Unfortunately, the boyfriend made the mistake of mentioning that if she stayed with us, we really couldn't handle it turning into another crazy nazi work fest (my phrase, not his!). She flipped out, and hasn't spoken to us for 2 years now, thinking, I'm sure (she's told me she's done it to others), that we'll learn how much we needed her and will come crawling back. We're just glad for the break. I called her to invite her to Thanksgiving dinner that year, and she hung up on me after I refused to badmouth my boyfriend to her (and I've always been honest when I think he's in the wrong). Apparently, I don't want to get in the middle because I "just don't care about her."

So, sorry for the interminably long post. Congrats if you made it this far! Think reading it was bad? Try living through a year of it!

Click "I Like This" if you think she may need professional help.
(RDT <>< <>< <>< <>< <>< <>< <>< <><, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 5:14, Reply)

Lawns
My dad likes to mow lawns. At the last count he's mowing:

- His own lawn
- His mother-in-laws lawn
- His sisters lawn
- His sisters neighbours lawn
- The lawn at a place my parents own and rent out
- The lawn at the house next door to the place my parents own and rent out
- The lawn at the pub in the next village
- The lawn at the office of the firm he used to work for
- My godfather's lawn

During the summer he mows these twice a week each. That's a full working day of mowing every week, by my reckoning.

Someone once sold him a car worth about 5k for a tenner on the understanding that he'd do some mowing for the seller. Seller failed to realise he'd have done the mowing anyway. The man just loves to mow.
(theweapon never ever bloody anything ever, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 3:29, Reply)

Flying visit
My dad used to tell me about his nan who used to come with them to stay. She was seriously batty and used to do crazy things like put cats in the washing machine and iron next door's rabbit etc.
She was in the bedroom one evening so my dad and his brothers decided to dress the space hopper in her clothes and throw it out of the window. My dads mum leapt out of her chair thinking her mother had leapt out of the bedroom window (trying to fly, or something).
She fainted when her mother appeared to bounce up again 8 feet in the air, over a bus shelter and into a neighbours garden!

Moral of the story -
(mysticegg, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 18:07, Reply)

Poor, dead Great Aunt Dorothy
Great Aunt Dorothy was brought up in the Indian Raj and never did a stroke of work in her life.

Already somewhere to the right of Margaret Thatcher, she became even more extreme as she got older to the point that she would remark that it "was a shame that nice Herr Hitler died. He would have sorted out the immigration."

We foolishly had her round to stay for two weeks, during which time we were not allowed to watch ITV ("Full of bearded common people and communists") and BBC1 was barely tolerated ("Full of bearded communists").

One Sunday, forced against our will to watch Songs of Praise ("Good, sturdy, BRITISH television") the camera scanned across the congregation and settled squarely on a not unattractive black lady singing along to All Things Bright and Beautiful.

This was not Great Aunt Dorothy's idea of Bright and Beautiful in the slightest. In fact, she was going bright red and fit to explode. And she did, in classic Alf Garnett language, spittle flying from her inexpertly rouged lips:

"Good Lord! It's a bloody coon! On Songs of Praise! Have the BB-bloody-C gone stark raving mad? It's a bloody coon!"

She was asked to leave, and told in no uncertain terms never to darken our door again. Then she died.

Hooray for non-racist parents!
( Scaryduck LIKES EGG, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 8:20, Reply)

My Nana
Regularly phones the council to complain that there are ARMADILLOS living in her house, and they should do something about it. No matter how much we try and explain to her that WOODLICE can get through the smallest crack, and that getting the odd one a month in her hall during summer will not actually harm her.
(turtles head is touching cloth poked a dwarf on the forehead at, Thu 5 Jul 2007, 18:41, Reply)

Grampa
My grandad, for whatever reason, needed to climb a tree about 10 years ago to cut down a branch that was upsetting him. My gran told him that if he fell and hurt himself to not come complaining to her. After a few hours of not hearing any swearing she took a look out the window and saw him sat by the tree having fallen off and broken both his legs.

"You said don't call you if something happened..."

After recovering in hospital and back home to do his bricolage, he then managed to cut off bits of his fingers with a circular saw. He swears the dog ate them.

After recovering from that, back in his garage, he needed to open a little tub of super-glue. What with the newly mangled hand and what-not, he decided to use his mouth and efficiently glued his gob shut.

Ok, this time he couldn't "call" for help so OAP reasoning took over that he could deal with this with a wood file from the shed and shred his lips back open. Still alive and kicking though he probably doesn't remember any of it :(
(schrembot says nah..., Thu 5 Jul 2007, 16:29, Reply)

My Dad went shopping
Drove off, heading for Sainsbury's. Came back 3 minutes later.

Him: "I took the spare car keys by mistake."

Me: "Does it matter?"

Him: (as if I'm an idiot) "They're the SPARE KEYS!"

Me: Yes, I got that, but why does it matter?

Him: (now almost apoplectic) "THEY'RE THE SPARES!!!"

And off he goes in a huff. With the 'right' keys this time.

Who knows?
( MisterPunch did it that way on, Mon 9 Jul 2007, 14:39, Reply)

Granny
My one surviving Grandmother is a piece of work. She's 90 with the mind of a 20 year old. She called me last week and told me that she'd been in 'a fight' in the park. It turns out that she'd been out walking with a friend of hers when several 17 or 18 year old boys made fun of the 'old ladies'. Apparently (and knowing my grandmother this is entirely believable) she threatened to 'smack you all hard in the balls with my walking stick if you don't apologise'. They apologised, got talking, and then went to a local tea room where they had tea and cake.

Another time I went to visit her and she broke out the gin (there were 3 1-litre bottles of gin in her cupboard), and told me that she was envious of young people today as we had more freedom: "If I'd have had the opportunities that you have I'd have fucked around a lot more before I got married".

She's currently 'stepping out' (as she puts it) with a 70 year old Italian ex-ballet dancer, an 80 year old English guy, and a 73 year old British Pakistani guy. She also fell out with the 'old ladies' at a local church as they were 'too slow' - most of them are in their 70s... shes 90.

Honestly, she's a great laugh. Physically she's aged 90, but she acts like she's 20. Proof that age is, sometimes, a matter of mental state.
(Zapiola zip-zap-zop, Sat 7 Jul 2007, 17:39, Reply)

Me grandad was nuts, and has indirectly helped me answer loads of QOTW's
Time to make a list;

1 - He used to play darts in the kitchen as me gran was cooking...darts whizzing past her head (and missing by literally a millimetre) every few seconds.

2 - He ate his cooked sunday dinner from the saucepan, regardless of visitors.

3 - He hated Jehovas, which is ok, normal enough. But as in hated, he'd threaten them with violence even before they'd got onto his garden path.

4 - He'd had a kitten which was starving, even though he was feeding it. So he spied on it one morning and saw a big tomcat from next door swipe the poor kitty out of the way to starve. He immediately run outside, caught the tomcat and punched it into his shed door. (Im sure I posted this a few weeks back)

5 - Him and dad went to a pub, and all the tables were full. So grandad walks upto a table full of old ladies and starts pulling one of the chairs out with a granny still sitting on it and shouting "Thank you very much ladies, get up and move it, cmon, shift your arse". One of the grannies says "Well I never" to which me grandad quick as a flash replies "And you won't with a face like that, now fuck off please" while ushering them all out of the pub.

6 - Used to be a regular drink driver. That's another QOTW, involving him pissed and a hurse (I couldn't make this up).

There are loads more reasons why he was nuts, but this one stands out.

7 - Me parents and I call around to thier house one day, and we're sitting around this nice homely table in the dining room. I'm aged 10, me baby sister was 3 and gran was in the room as well, all talking politely. Grandad turns to me during a lull in the conversation and says the following immortal speach;
"You know Jeccy, from all my sons and siblings, it turns out that you are indeed the last of a long line of people to carry the surname of my family. I only realised this upon reflection last night, while looking through all the photos about the house. So Jeccy....I want you to go out there and get fucking."
Gee thanks grandad, sound advice for a 10 year old :D
( Jeccius Steam Borderlands 2 junkie, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 17:28, Reply)

I still say that it's me...
...and I think my kids will agree to that.

I had to take my son to the doctor to have an ingrown toenail fixed. For those who don't know, a toenail can sometimes be too wide for the toe, so the outside corners of it become embedded in the flesh and get infected. (Sorry for the unpleasant image there...) To fix it, the doctor removes a strip of the toenail along both sides and destroys the nail bed below it so it can't grow back.

The doctor my ex's insurance dictates she go to is in a teaching clinic- that is, they get medical students there to get their practical experience, and have a few experienced doctors on hand to guide the Doogie Howsers. This particular day it was a girl in her twenties who saw my son, and who had never done this procedure. As one would expect, she got one of the older docs to demonstrate the procedure for her, so my son and I got to listen to a lecture on how to anaesthetize the toe to achieve digital blocking, then how to cut the nail, and so on. All quite educational, and somewhat over the heads of a teenager and his father the engineer.

When all was done, my son looked at me and said, "Dad, what did he mean by digital blocking?"

The nurse bandaging his toe said cheerfully, "That means to block all the pain signals from the toe by injecting the anaesthetic into the nerves to make it numb."

I leaned closer to him and spoke in a conspiratorial voice. "Actually, when you weren't looking the doctor hooked your toe up to a USB port on a laptop and copied an mp3 file of the Carpenters into it. If you put your foot near your ear you can hear Karen Carpenter singing 'Close To You'."

The nurse looked at me as though I had seven antlers, then turned to my son. "Is he always like this?"

He glumly nodded...
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Fri 6 Jul 2007, 15:14, Reply)

Mad uncle
One of my uncles has an invisible friend, and although he never really brings it up when he's at our house, I understand that he goes on about it constantly at work.

Mind you, he is a vicar.
( Amish Information Systems hates misplaced, commas, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 12:33, Reply)

And here's one on Mom...
The year was 1993. It was about a month before I moved away from upstate NY, while I was living on one of the Finger Lakes southwest of Syracuse.

There was a massive snowstorm in April that dumped about three feet of snow overnight. It took me a day to dig out my cars from it and paralyzed Syracuse for a couple of days- not an easy thing to do.

That weekend I called up my parents to see how they had fared in the Adirondacks. Mom said that Dad was very worried, as rain was in the forecast. Rain on a large amount of fluffy snow is like water into a sponge- and that's usually what causes roofs to collapse up there. So I agreed to come up and shovel the roofs with Dad.

He and I spent the better part of the morning and afternoon on the roof with our shovels. We realized that the best approach was to use the shovels to cut the snow into blocks and slide them to the edge of the roof, so we dumped these three and a half foot tall blocks down about twenty feet to form a pile that was to stay there well into May.

When we finished, Dad was pretty well wiped out- he was 65 at the time- so when Mom asked if he was also going to clear off the woodsheds, he growled that as far as he was concerned the goddam things could collapse. Mom turned to me. "What do you think? Are you up for shoveling a bit more?"

"Sure." I was thirty at that point and had had some coffee, so I was still able to go on. So Mom and I set up a ladder on the back of the woodshed roof and climbed up to shovel.

We used the same technique- cut a block, get the shovel under it and drag it to the edge- and got it cleared reasonably quickly. But when I went to climb down I realized that I had done something very stupid.

We had buried the goddam ladder under the snow.

I shook my head. "Sorry, Mom. I should have thought of that. I'll jump down into the snow and dig it out." And I hopped down about eight feet and landed knee deep in the pile we had made.

I was about to dig out the ladder when I heard, "Hey, that looked like fun!" And I looked up just in time to see my 63 year old mother sailing through the air and end up waist deep in the snow.

It took me a few minutes extra to dig her out because we were both laughing so hard...
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Thu 5 Jul 2007, 19:11, Reply)

my dear grandfather, may he rest in peace,
was known as what you might call "a character" in his local town. He wasn't senile or stupid or dangerous, more a kind of joker in the pack.

He went through a phase of writing letters. This included a letter to his own bosses while recuperating from his first heart attack that went along the lines of "Thank you for the card. I was wondering, when I am at work, I do what you tell me for X hours a day and am paid $Y per hour. I am currently working 24 hours a day on getting better, exactly as you have told me to - when will I get my overtime pay?" Anyone else might have got disciplined - but seeing as he was good old [Grandad], he got a personal apology, in the same tone and humour as his letter, from the top boss.

He taught my sister and I to walk to the shops with one foot on the kerb and the other in the gutter. He taught us songs full of foreign slang and swearwords (we were too young to get it) which drove my grandmother bananas. He spent the best part of a year scouting for local playgrounds so that the following year, when we went to stay for the summer holidays, we could visit a different playground Every. Single. Day.

Crazy as hell but in the best possible way :)
( Batsgirl, Thu 5 Jul 2007, 16:48, Reply)

My Grandad...
My Grandad once told me a fantastic story. He used to belong to a cycling club 'back in the day', and while they were out on a long countryside race one time he got chatting to a girl on a bike next to him.

When they pulled up for a break at a pub, there was this lovely hotel over the road, and the girl kept eyeing it, eyeing my Grandad, and saying things like "Ooh, isn't that a nice hotel."

Grandad told his mate this, his mate said "Have a weekend in that hotel, son, it'd do you good" or words to that effect. "Hmm", thought my Grandad.

So anyway, next weekend, goes to the hotel, has a (in his words) 'lovely time'.

Next weekend again, girl won't talk to Grandad. Keeps giving him sour looks, won't ride next to him, etc. Perplexed, Grandad goes to talk to mate again, explains the situation.

"You idiot," says mate, "You were supposed to bloody take her with you!"

When he told me this I curled up on Morrison's aisle floor crying with laughter.
(Vis with a wink and a wiggle..., Wed 11 Jul 2007, 8:54, Reply)

My Dad.
My old man is an extremely intelligent eccentric. We've clashed over a few things, but Im glad he's my dad.

A very minor example to start with. As a boy/teenager, if I had friends around, and one broke, say a cup, my dad would then start throwing other crockery items around to make them feel less like they'd done wrong. However, this isn't what makes him stand out as crazy.

The defining anecdote about my dads mentalness is this...

Scene setting. Its the early eighties. 82/83. A housing estate in sleepy cheshire. Dad and one of his friends head off in the car (Vauxhall Marina) to do something. Can't remember what. Me and my Sis and Ma are sat at home doing whatever it was we did in the eighties.

Dad has a car accident. He's only got 3 or 4 hundred metres away from the house, when another car crashed into him.

Now, he was wearing his seatbelt, but they werent so tight or responsive in them days. Dad goes through the windscreen. Then the seatbelt pulls him pack through.

He turned the car around, and DROVE HOME!!

Calmy comes in through the front door, blood pumping out from all around his head and neck. We all scream. He looked like he's just re enacted the school ball scene from Carrie.

Wanders up stairs, spends a few minutes trying to clean himself up so he can assess the damage, before giving in, wrapping towels around his severely lacerated neck, and letting my mum drive him to the hospital.

Now, I don't know about you, but if I went through a windscreen both ways, my story would be end something like "I screamed like a girl for an ambulance."

And a final round up. When I was fifteen, I was going out with a seventeen your old girl. The week before my sixteenth, he suggested I might like to invite my girlfiend over for the weekend, which I duly did. Friday cometh, he bought me durex, and he moved into a hotel for the weekend.

He came back on the saturday morning. Bought us a full fried english brekkie in bed. Did a bit of nudge nudge wink wink, then buggered off again and left us to it.

What a legend.
( Dr Nick Riviera, Tue 10 Jul 2007, 15:10, Reply)

My slightly crazy Polish granddad...
...did a number of crazy things during his life, many in his last 10 or so years, until he died this past Christmas at the age of 85. A few of these I only heard recently from my parents:

1. When he first moved into this country during WWII, he married my grandma, bought a plot of land in Essex, and built his own bungalow, garage and various farmhouses. When they got electricity, he developed a strange fascination with it, insisting on replacing all the plugs and sockets of his tools as he didn't like the ones they came with. This resulted in many broken drills, saws and things that my dad would usually end up having to mend for him...

...it turned out ALL the wall sockets in his garage had the wires the wrong way around, requiring him to rewire all the plugs on his new tools. This explained why most of his electricals didn't even have a fuse in them - he had removed them all to make them work.

2. He bought an electric chainsaw to cut down the bushes and through small bits of firewood. He loved it, but one day it 'broke' and so he gave it to my dad to fix it...

...my dad took one look and decided to never give it back. Grandad had removed nearly every single safety feature from the saw because his old hands (one of which was missing a finger he knocked off) and fading mind couldn't operate it. On trying to remove the final safety feature- the on/off switch (he decided the only on/off switch it should need was at the wall socket) - he had broken it.

3. A few years ago my mum was on her way to visit him and my grandma. As she drove up the driveway, she saw him about 10ft up a ladder, cutting a stray branch off a tree over the road. She stopped, and leapt out of the car over to him, begging him to come down...

...he had been cutting off the branch his ladder was resting on.

R.I.P. Grandad.
( johnsto, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 16:40, Reply)

Right . . .
My Mum used to sing to electrical appliances when I was younger, as apparently this made them work quicker. I grew up thinking that this was the norm and got some odd looks when, at my friends house, I suggested that we get her mother to sing to the VHS player as it wasn't working.

My Dad talks to himself. This on its own isn't that crazy, but he ends up arguing with himself and once got so angry with himself that he punched himself in the face.

My Dad's parents tried to kill me when I was a baby (by feeding me milk that was several days old and had been left outside)as they didn't approve of my parents getting together and of course the only logical thing to do was kill their offspring . . .

My Mum's parents are the ones that left the porn on in the house when we went to visit.

My Great Grandmother (on my Mum's side) once stopped us entering her house when we went to show her my younger brother a week or so after he'd been born as, according to her, "he's the spawn of Satan, that one".

And my brother thinks he's a God. He calls himself Treelord and has a hymn entitled 'Glen'.

I'm just waiting to see what my madness will be ... *twitch*.

(Link's sfw bytheway. Only links to previous QOTW)
( Fluffy elephants, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 9:23, Reply)

Slightly eccentric rather than barking mad
One of my aunts talks to wheelie bins.

Another aunt.....

- shaves off her eyebrows and pencils them in....badly;

- bought me cologne for Christmas (I'm female). It was that '50p at the market' stuff too. My cousin got a better present of an umbrella. Shame he's permenantly on crutches.

- has grown her fringe and has it piled up on top of her head so she looks like Mr Whippy.

- is still convinced 70s wide collars are in fashion and wears black tights with white sandals.

- her jaw starts moving a good 5 seconds before her voice decides to kick in, like a badly dubbed kung fu film.


But the nuttiest relative has got to be my late grandad. Examples include.....

- playing hide and seek with me and my cousins wearing a balaclava and dark sunglasses (I have photographic proof of this).

- throwing a stepladder out of an upstairs window because he couldn't be arsed to carry them downstairs. Broke the steps and most of my nan's flowers.

- going swimming in the sea on a family outing, wearing white pants because he didn't have his swimmers. They went seethrough.

- walloping my dad over the head with a wooden mallett for a laugh. Something to do with keeping his troops in line when he was in the army in WWII.

- insisting that Taboo was a new kind of squash and gave it to me and my cousins (I was about 7 or 8 at the time).

I miss the mad old git.
(ninja chinchilla, Thu 5 Jul 2007, 20:12, Reply)

My mum's a paranoid schizophrenic...
..no really she is.

We're always having a laugh.

This is how schizo brain works;

I visit, she says I look a little tired -"Yes, I've been working hard" I reply...Two weeks pass, during which time she's been working out the REAL reason for my tiredness.

So at some point I'll visit and she'll put on her mad face -slight frown, staring eyes, resolute pursed lips- and tell me she knows.

She knows I've been hiding in the tree outside her bedroom window spraying her with poison while she sleeps.

I'll start to gently dismantle this particular psychosis, and she'll be explaining why she knows I'm trying to kill her.

I know when I'm getting through to her, coz she'll give me some tea and cake. Then as I'm leaving she'll squeeze my arm and give me a hug, momentarily like a real mum, and tell me "I know you wouldn't do anything to hurt me (success!), it must have been your brother" (oh shitcrap).

.

Edit - Oh and my uncle who drilled a hole in his head to let the evil out, surprisingly common apparently. And another uncle who jumped in a harbour, fully clothed, looked up at his friends, said "come on in the water's lovely" and promptly drowned...what with it being the Outer Hebrides in winter the water was not conducive to life.
( Ring Of Fire A petty, drooling belming butthurt retard., Fri 6 Jul 2007, 7:44, Reply)

Out to lunch
This QOTW seems very familiar so I'll pearoast my grandma (PEAroast not spit...)

One day I was round at my Grandma's sorting out some wiring for her, she popped her head round the door to say she was going down to the shops and would I like anything? I asked her to pick me up a Mars bar as I was starving.

Later on she came back and said "I didn't get you a Mars bar but I've got you a packet of batteries instead"


Length? never mind the quality, feel the width....
(Cliche Guevara Predicatably revolutionary since, Thu 5 Jul 2007, 17:45, Reply)

The Wood Museum
My dad collects, stores, and reverentially cherishes wood.

OK, let's be specific - planks, or finished surfaces.

Examples - I had a new kitchen fitted recently. Mr and Mrs Disappointed came to visit. There was a spare drawer front which Mr. D cradled longingly then took home.

A window frame, complete with glass, was removed from their neighbours house during recent alterations. Mr D retreived the whole shooting match from the skip.

There is a shed at the bottom of their garden full (comprehensively - you can no longer open the door) of wood, including a hutch last occupied by our Guinea Pigs over 20 years ago.

It is impossible to get behind the shed due to the sheer amount of wood stashed there.

The wood stash has now started to consolidate behind the conservatory.

I ought to add that my 68 year old father is utterly compos mentis in all other respects and held a highly responsible post with the MOD prior to his retirement.

Eventually my father and mother will pass on, because all flesh is as grass.

I will inherit, amongst other things, a fucking enormous amount of utterly useless timber.

I'm seriously considering killing two birds with one stone and sending him off with a viking funeral.
( The Disappointed Caravanner of the year, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 21:31, Reply)

so, so many crazy people
my mother is one of 12 siblings and my dad is one of 9, so there are a hell of a lot to choose from.

auntie connie
once rang my mum at 2a.m saying that there was a strange man in her bed. mum just said "connie, is it uncle roy?" it was. she'd forgotten about her own husband.
decorated her kitchen in flowery wallpaper. my sister went in there to get a glass and couldn't find the way out for 5 minutes. she'd wallpapered the door as well.

my brother
if he's frying an egg and it spits at him (the hot fat) he'll spit back at it.
refuses to believe he's colourblind and accuses us of ganging up on him, just to tell him the coat he thinks is green is actually grey.

my mum
talks to the dinner when she's cooking it.
phones me at odd times to ask if i know where she's put her umbrella/glasses/keys.
sings sons with the words wrong at the top of her voice for no reason.
stares at you 2 hours after you arrive at her house and says "hello.

uncle ernie
points at people at family parties and says "i think i'm related to you!"

auntie linda
took my 3-year-old sister to town and lost her, then left her there so she could come home to tell mum she'd lost her. she was about 20 at the time.
forbids anyone from mentioning belly buttons anywhere near her.
refuses to pluck the hairs from her chin, despite the fact that they're so long, she could lay them out at night as tripwires.

uncle ian
greets everybody he sees with "alright, mings!"
thinks taped-up jack duckworth-style glasses are cool.
replies to every question with "ooh, you bloody thing, you!"

that's just a small section of my family. this is why i live alone and will never reproduce.
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 3:12, Reply)

Bob.
My late grandfather used to have a problem with cats crapping in his prized garden. He hated them so much that he would keep a water pistol filled with bleach by his back door. He'd watch through his kitchen window and, upon spotting a moggie, grab the squirter and dash out of the back door to attack.

When he discovered that this didn't do his roses much good when he (usually) missed, he bought not one but _two_ air pistols. He'd keep them loaded and developed an amazing technique where he held one in each hand, could quickly cock both, and burst out of the back door firing them together, John Woo-style.

He continued this until about two months before he died aged 88.



P.S. as far as I know, no cats were actually harmed during the making of this story. He was brilliant to watch, but a lousy shot.
( sanityclause is waiting until, Thu 5 Jul 2007, 23:54, Reply)

crazy cousins
i have a few potty cousins but this one really sticks out to me.

i have this cousin who lives up in scotland, a little younger than myself, who's really into the WW2 japanses Kamikaze pilots (he's whitetrash BTw), so much so that he tries to emulate them and has done for a number of years by crashing into parked cars yelling BANZAIIIIIII!. god knows how many times he's gone to hospital. but one event i actually whitnessed, he had just had a moped bought by his parents (it was in a nice red and white colour...) and so was absolutly ecstatic. i had to go to the pub for a bit (hair of the dog), when i returned he had attached wings and 'bombs' of flour onto his moped and was racing round the cul de sac untill someone parked up their car. there was a yell of 'BANZAIIII!' then he went headon to the parked car, he hit it then there was a puff of flour a spectacular site to behold. just wish i had got pictures :(
( Dances with Rabbits Back to Education i go, Tue 10 Jul 2007, 17:07, Reply)

My nan...
My nan once took her dog Daisy out in the car to the park. On her return to the car, she got in, and looked in horror at the fact that someone had stolen her steering wheel! She then proceeded to ask Daisy (the dog) who had stolen it... Before realising she had got in to the car on the wrong side, and the steering wheel was still intact.
(applysomepressure, Tue 10 Jul 2007, 1:08, Reply)

My uncle....
.....has a boat tied to his house. In this boat he keeps his car.


Just in case it floods.















He lives in Arizona.
( The Pollitt chooses to listen to Enya on, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 12:00, Reply)

wife's grandmother
She's dead now, but she was was mad as a blender full of squirrels while she lived. In the latter stages of Alzeimers, she lived in a delusional world of hatred and paranoia. For example:

- She would publicly spit at anyone with a beard on the assumption that they were Jewish (as a typical Polish pensioner, she despised Jews).
- Her eyebrows had been plucked invisible over time, so she marked them in with an eye-pencil as thick as a thumb. The lines extended almost to her temples, making her look like a Vulcan.
- She accused her family of stealing her false teeth and demanded to look in everyone's mouth. She found them in the end - in her own mouth.
- She often did farts that sounded like someone ripping a hessian-backed carpet. We would just continue eating the meal without comment.
- At Christmas dinner one year, she began to shout at me in Polish, saying that she'd met me on a train to Warsaw in 1973 and that I had stolen her sandwiches. I was 2 in 1973. And in Sheffield,

On the other hand, she'd had a hard life. Her first husband was executed in the street by the Gestapo, she brought up her children in a forced labour camp and her second husband ran away. Then she had almost a lifetime of forced Communism.
(frankspencer, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 9:13, Reply)

My uncle Sid...
..was an engineer at Fords so he knew his way round a car. One day, however, his beloved VW camper van finally gave up its last ghost. Try as he might, he couldn't get it going. He called his brother to see if he could help (he was also a mechanic) but even with the two of them on the case there was no joy. After discussing the possibilities for a couple of hours (over many, many cold beers), Sid and his brother agreed that the van was properly dead. At this point they decided, with the ineffable wisdom of the truly hammered, that since it was dead, a proper Christian burial was in order.

They rolled the van into the garage and, over that afternoon and the next day, dug a huge pit in the back garden of Sid's house, complete with a slope at one end. When it was deep enough, they rolled the van into it, put the windows through, filled it with dirt and buried it - carefully replacing the turf afterwards. My Auntie ended up with the biggest rockeries and flowerbeds in Dagenham. As far as we know it's still there now (Sid and Margaret have both long since passed on, sadly). Whoever lives there now has no idea what's lurking a foot below the lawn, but heaven help whoever decides to build an extension on the back. And as for what the archaeologists of the future will make of it...
(spratty last did something indefensible on, or about, Mon 9 Jul 2007, 15:36, Reply)

My Grandmother Hates Everyone. It's What She Does.
My grandmother has been jaded in terms of any family member getting into a relationship for quite a while. I'd say she gave up in terms of finding a partner in her 30s and is getting close to 70 as I type. She has jet black hair, with a pale and cold face that reminds people of winter. She always sits with her legs akimbo, her immense stomach pulled through this gap by gravity, to the extent that her elbows always dig into her knees as a type of support to keep herself from falling forwards. Anyway, she was very upset to be losing her "little boy to a money-grabbing whore" and was especially frightened after I remarked I'd end up living near New York to be with my charming other half.

"New York? Oh no! You'd better be careful there!"
"Oh no? Why not, Nan?"
"Because of the crocodiles!"
"The crocodiles?"
"Yes! There's an alleyway in New York somewhere, where crocodiles come out of the manholes and drag people down to the sewers and eat them. Crocodile Alley, it's called."

Cue a conversation for a good ten minutes about how New York wouldn't be such a thriving tourist destination if the average tourist had a chance of death by alligator, and her eventual admission that she was watching the news, may have drifted off, and may have woke up near the end of a film with a crocodile, and may have linked the two clips together.

Thankfully, I didn't get crocoraped and moved out towards Washington state, which is one of the more northwest states. Right next to Canada, in fact.

"Ooh! Canada! Oh no! Watch out there!"
"Why's that, nan?"
"Because of the students!"
"The students. Why are they so bad?"
"I watched a documentary and every student in Canada is gay or lesbian!"
"Okay. And this makes it a bad place?"
"Yes! How are you going to find male friends in Canada when they get you drunk and want to grab onto your winky?"

Cue a ten minute conversation about the evil student men who love to grab winkies and jerk off people anywhere they can get away with it.

"They don't try it in America because they've got guns."

Nan swears to her grave that the documentary told her that students can work themselves gay.

She also had a game which she'd play when she wanted me to go over the road and get her some shopping. She'd give me five pounds if I'd pick up something she hadn't put on her shopping list, so long as she liked my choice. I essentially had to make an impulse purchase for her to gain extra pocket money for myself. Sometimes she'd tell me she hated my offering, but would play a double-or-nothing round and invite me to go back and buy what she really wanted. These items were typically things she didn't want at all, she just wanted to embarrass me. A test of my bravery and/or my greed; my true colours.

It still haunts me that I was so desperate for money that the first time I bought condoms, aged a tender 14, I didn't use them. The conversation led into me explaining to the friendly shopkeep that these condoms were not for me, but for my withering grandmother instead. The ten pounds was spent well before the ridicule slowed down.

I've got to be grateful that she taught me that money wasn't everything, at least.

I'd apologise for the length, but if you've got it, flaunt it.
(Master Kazoo é?, Mon 9 Jul 2007, 11:41, Reply)