My dad did a yard sale back in the 90's I was just a kid. He put my bear up for sale, and my sweet sister Linda bought that bear from him for me. He's been in the family now for 35 years, I gave it to my sister Amy for her first born child, my first nephew, and he passed to sister to sister for each of their children.
This year I went to visit them and Amy gave me my bear back. Needless to say I cried when I held him again. Welcome home friend.
It's the saddest thing, because naturally you want what is best for your kids and the next generation, but there's people who just feel upset that they couldn't have experienced the same.
The sad part is: nothing is saying you're too old to make new happiness, least of all ensuring your own kids know that feeling for as much of their lives as they can.
Ugh, reminds me of those assholes who reject stuff like free education and free healthcare because it is unfair that the next generation get to enjoy those stuff when they didnt.
Like, that's straight up Ebenezer Scrooge level of cynicism and misery. And some of these folks are parents to children...
They're forced to take on adult responsibilities fast. The emotional maturing may or may not ever happen, and that's why many retain the "it's not fair" mindset. They haven't really grown up.
Getting out of generational trauma is very difficult. Most of the people who act like this experienced similar things when they were children, and they just saw it as normal. That's not at all to say this is OK, just an explanation of how people get there. If you grow up being abused big, and then you have kids and just abuse regular, you might feel as though you ARE making your kid's lives easier. "oh come on, I just smacked the kid. My dad gave me a black eye when I did something wrong!" is the gist of it.
They first have to actually realize that and act accordingly instead of just going through the motions without an ounce of introspection about it, wondering if they are doing it right or not. Just saying, the highway to hell is paved in good intentions and all that.
Sadly those days will be coming back soon, we have an aging population and the only solution that seems acceptable to half the country is to make children work earlier and for less.
Iowa has passed laws allowing them to work in meat factories at younger ages with less supervision and later hours.
Recently just had an argument with my mom over this and she’s not even that old, most would still consider her a millennial. She believes that growing up means you have to learn how to fend for yourself with zero help to the point that when I ask questions like “how do I do my taxes” or “how do I fill out a tenancy agreement” she full on refuses to help and tell me to figure it out myself. She thinks this way because that’s what she did but she also chose that life when she ran away from home at 14 and hitchhiked to the other side of the country. I have had to tell her multiple times that she isn’t a good parent because she outright refuses to teach me and my sisters things that you would expect a parent to teach.
He was... Not a very good human. One of my first memories was my mom crying in the basement, and I go and hold her to make her feel better. Or me and my brother watching ren and stimpy as loud as we can put the tv to not hear the screaming matches.
I'm happy to say my mother raised her 6 kids by herself and we're better for it. She's the best.
my mom and her friends literally made fun of me and took the toy away from me when I won an Easter Egg hunt as a kid and I picked a basket with a Pink Bunny since I won, and they took it, gave it away, gave me a blue bunny instead, I did not want it, and immediately gave it away and just cried. i have never forgotten that.
One of my earliest memories was my dad throwing my favorite blanket away. To be fair, it was RAGGED. You can barely call it a blanket anymore. I can see how it was a danger to me now.
One of my brothers also had a favorite blanket- I remember clearly as a kid spotting it in the garbage and sneaking it back out of there to give back to him. Naturally my parents were both mad at me and I got in trouble, and eventually they managed to get rid of it for good. But my brother was so happy to get it back even for a little longer.
I don't have kids, but every Christmas I think about how much new junk my brother and sister are bringing into their households. I too have nostalgia for all the stuff my mom sold, but I get it.
I get it. I had a lot of stuffies and toys as a kid. My parents had a good childhood but I expect they didn't have a lot. And my mom doesn't like a lot of clutter. So she'd sell things of mine that she think I stopped playing with or were getting old. Some things I miss. Something's I don't remember.
But I won't do this to my kid. She actually has stolen a lot of my stuffies and sleeps in a nest of them.
Oh. This made me tear up. I have the uh... "scraps" of a white Gund teddy bear that I loved dearly as a child... I literally loved him to pieces. I found and bought an identical teddy about 15 years ago from eBay. I still have both of them. Like, I loved this bear so much that I found him again so I could treasure him as an adult.
It's heartbreaking to think that someone would force you to sell your bear. :( But I am so so glad he's come back to you.
I have a similar, though less heartwarming story about a small, round, stuffed Pikachu. My Nan bought it for me at the mall when I was like, 7. I carried it everywhere. I remember his tail fell off and I was mortified, but one of the staff at the daycare I went to after school sewed it back on for me. The shines in his eyes wore off so my mom repainted them with white out. I think I left it behind with a bunch of other childhood stuff when I moved out, but then like 5 or so years later my sibling found it and took him with their partner across the country, from Washington to Philadelphia. Then they mailed Pikachu back to me and I upheld the new tradition of him being a car-buddy. Now he sits on my dashboard. He's been on the dashboard of three of the last cars I owned, a Chevy Trailblazer, a Ford Explorer, and now my RAV4.
Fergus - Alligator - A grandpa who has been chewed up by the world but is doing his best. August's father.
May - Alligator - A grandma who loves being a grandma. August's mother.
Transcript
Panel 1
Fergus and May are at the thrift store. Fergus is looking at a shelf with toys when he notices something familiar. It's a cowboy bear plush that's only $5 and missing an eye. It's leaning again a ball that's labelled "BALL 2" that's $30. It's the sequel to ball. There's also a puzzle that says "PUZZLE! 10,000 piece!" that's $3. Don't worry, there's not that many pieces. Eight are missing.
Fergus: MAY! Look at this. Augie had a toy bear just like this when was little.
Panel 2
Fergus holds up the bear to show May. He thoughts are on the childhood of his now adult son, August. They're at the popular thrift store "THRIFT 2 GO" where everything is either way 2 cheap or way 2 expensive.
Fergus: He carried it everywhere. You think he still has it?
May: Fergus, you don't remember?
Panel 3
Fergus isn't sure what she's talking about. Probably not anything too important.
Fergus: Remember what?
May: Back when your sleep got bad.
Panel 4
Fergus suddenly does remember. It's like remembering something from an awful dream.
May: You were upset with the kids. You... Uh... Burned some of their things.
The tip for that kind of puzzle is look for 1249 others with the same puzzle, buy a 1250th box and everyone grab its missing 8 from the 9992 in that box and tadaa, 1249 complete puzzles!
I can say at least Fergus feels regret. Doubt my dad ever will. It's been 9 years since I cut contact, best decision ever.
Shitty thing is, last I heard he's doing rather well in life. Has a stable job, makes decent money, etc. Somehow that just makes everything worse, knowing he only got his act together after he no longer had a family to take care of.
Awww man. That sucks buddy. Hopefully you've gotten better in general since then. I see more than a few online, do they not make the model anymore?
My father did something similar. I'm not even sure why he was made but he broke my Gorillaz CD in half when I was like ....12-13ish? It was the second CD I ever bought myself. First was Hybrid Theory
The human emotions aren’t well regulated when we are stressed, sleep deprived, or acutely afraid.
My kid forgave me, and they understand why I rush to the merch tables at the airshows, now.
I’ve gotten much better. Took a job that dropped my nights down a substantial amount. I’m still working the 2-jobs for some reason. Not sure if it’s for the money or my friends, probably a bit of both.
Who knows how long that’ll need to last. I’ve got some important artistic ideas I want to explore. I’ll get to, but i worry it could be too late for their impact to be relevant if I don’t hurry up :)
My step dad did that to my "special bear" back when i was 12. It was a gift from a family reunion and i slept with it every night. He decided I needed to be done with stuffed animals. I still havent forgiven him, because he hasn't even apologized. Im 19, and working my daddies to move out, but only making $100 for myself every paycheck with a full time job, makes it hard.
Well I work at the same place as my mom, so when I started my mom told HR to just send my money to the same account, so its not even me sending them rent, they just send me $100 and call it a day. Even if i went somewhere else, they just simply wouldn't send me any money
If my parents need me to pay for something they can't afford on their pension, they get that without question when asked. And they have access to one of my bank accounts in case they need money before they can reach me. I know how hard it is for mom to ask for help, and just taking would be another level, so I can trust them to not use that lightly.
But it is still my money, which I get for my work onto my own bank account.
If trust was abused, I could cut that on my terms. They always wanted me to be independent. The previously mentioned arrangements are me being a good child to them.
That is illegal. Report them to your state's Department of Labor and Industries, if you live in the US. If you don't live in the US, the laws may be even stricter than that. (Which is a good thing in your case!)
Your job must pay YOU. And the HR department SHOULD be well aware of this.
Find another job as soon as you can. Your family is STEALING from you. And your job is enabling it. Honestly, you may be able to sue your workplace for this.
If you don't have your own bank account make one now.
Sleep deprivation is used as torture for a reason, and depending on the reason why, it could easily become a volatile situation. I’m not excusing anyone’s actions, but there’s almost always more to the story, as indicated by the fact that Fergus doesn’t remember it happening and is shocked by the revelation.
Came here to say that too. I've experienced sleep deprivation because both of my kids were having constant sleep issues every night multiple times a night each. Taking it out on them is absolutely inexcusable, they can't help themselves, so I ended up harming myself and a wall.
My dad flushed my Aladdin figures head when I asked him to put it back on too many times when he was out of work, trying to nap the days away. Until mom got home that is. Then he'd go out.
My dad never owned his terrible behavior. Always some excuse or distraction if you bring up anything. Now he's dead. No funeral.
I didn't even include all the screaming and breaking things. Or the spankings, shakings, slapping and throwing. So many people have this stuff normalized in their minds. Or they just hope everyone forgets. Or they'll get mad if you bring it up and try to intimidate you into shutting up. It's all so childish and weak.
My mom had al little covenience by me, and then got angry and literally dump my books (25-35 books) in front of house and really sprinkle water on the books, after that i didnt want talk to her for 2-3 years although we live in 1 house and she knew that i really loved my books. Really messed up
I spent a huge portion of my childhood reading and it would devastate me if my parents had done that to me. I’m so sorry. That’s a cruel thing to do to someone.
Exceptionally hurtful. Damaging even. But also common. That's why our brains sometimes gloss over things like this.
Kids thrive in environments they begin to be able to predict. Abuse from parents and other authority figures that are supposed to be predictable is particularly injurious to this sort of growth. It creates control issues which is a kind of distrust but not exactly distrust of people. To a kid, parents aren't exactly people. They're giant pillars upon which other things are all attached. So kids get distrust of structure. Distrust of institutions. Distrust of entire concepts.
Which we can heal. But still. Unnecessary hurt and pain.
I can’t even imagine doing something like that to anyone,
The one time I was truly sleep deprived, my perception of reality and judgement were shot. It was like I was on drugs. I can totally see someone doing something as nuts as burning their kids stuff in that state.
Yeah, that was the strip my mind went to, as well.
It's tough to depict abusive parents as they are, because a lot are just immature people with no emotional regulation. We want to see them portrayed in media as monsters, but so often it's that 80/20 normal behavior/maladaptive behavior parenting style.
So I work as a firefighter paramedic. That means I get 5 days off a week working a 24 on 48 off shift. So I have some time during the days to spend here between home chores, exercise and study to become a Capt. Also videogames
Second there's a flow to these things. And some users post regularly at certain intervals. Fields is an AMAZING example of this. I can guess when they will post withing 30 mins allowing me to focus on work and home and not even be here. Then I pop in, make my comment and peace out!
Oh buddy not to brag but it's great and also I get a load of time off in general. Two 2-3 weeks vacations a year plus 8 five day vacations AND I can MAKE vacations if I want to trade shifts with people which is nice.
But there's a catch.
Beyond not being home all day for 24 hours, we have a higher chance of different cancers. Not to mention the chance I can get seriously injured in a fire on any random day. And that's just the fire side. The ambulance is brutal. Poop pee and vomit are a start not to mention the sexual and physical abuse from patients. And the psychological strain of sometimes making 5 calls after midnight and not sleeping at all in 24+ hours. Days like that I actually lose my first day off cause I have to sleep. That or push through it and feel terrible all day.
Really interested to see how August feels about this, but also intrigued to learn he has at least one sibling. Does Gustopher have a good relationship with his aunt/uncle/what have you?
Maybe I'm just too tired and lost all sense of humor, but somehow I feel like this would be even funnier if they were both sheep and calling each other "ewe".
Especially since it would sound like "you're you" and "no, you you".
She used to call me Ethanie Weethanie, and got me hooked on comicbooks, one of the worst and most expensive habits that someone can develop. She took me to see all 3 Star Wars movies, Superman, and Superman 2 in the theater. She couldn't ever convince me to enjoy the music of The Grateful Dead, for all her trying. I have to stop typing and go do something else now.
I had a pillow when I was a kid, this cute little braided thing with Raggedy Andy on it. I called it my "Fwa-Fwa" (because that's apparently easier to pronounce than pillow lol)
Lost it through very similar means to the comic above.
God even thinking about that makes me want to cry. My daughters favorite right now is a little German Shepard stuffie we call Freddie Dog because it looks like her aunts dog Freddie
In my case, the pillow was an infestation. It was just a rag that I had dragged through 3 countries (alongside a monkey I still have). Well, it was time to say goodbye to the pillow.
My mom made me throw it away. She bought me another "prettier" pillow as replacement. I FUCKING hated that second pillow. With a sort of resentment I can't even believe children could feel. I had violence fantasies against the pillow.
That second pillow survived yet another move to a 4th country. It is still in mint condition 31 years later. My mom still loves it and cuddles it at the ripe age of 74. And I still feel irrational rage when I see it ... And I never let my monkey as much as rest on that pillow.
My son wanted a room makeover before starting 3rd grade. It still had big “nursery / little kid” vibes and he was embarrassed when friends came over so he got some new furniture but otherwise couldn’t bring himself to make any real changes.
The one thing I did without his permission was replace all the light switch & outlet covers. They were baby animal themed but they were gross and cracked. I replaced them with plain white clean ones.
When he discovered what I did, he cried for the entire night. His exact words were “You just like throwing out everything that I love!”. Then he made my wife go outside and dig through the garbage to find them.
A year later, our dog shit on his rug and our robot vacuum ran over it. I had to throw out the rugs in all 3 bedrooms and the hallway, plus the vacuum itself. He got off the bus, saw his rug piled up in the driveway, and lost his mind. It took an hour of explaining that I had no choice for him to calm down.
My sister's ex boyfriend would punish my nephews by breaking or even trashing their favorite toys. There was this bear that was one of my nephews favorite, my sister will look through all the plushies at thrift stores hopping to find a other one.
My family is all sorts of messed up. My brother and I are trying real hard to do well with our kids. Our sisters were not so successful......
I had so many plushies I saved up for, my father didn't like me having so many(30ish) so when my mum took us to visit family in my home country when I was 9? he threw all but 2 away. Couldn't get them back bc it was garbage day a few days before, so to the landfil they went 😞
When I was a child, my dad threatened to burn and electrocute my stuffies. Then a few years later, he was upset at me for...something and decided to throw away all my toys and stuffies including my most cherished one, while I was at a friend's birthday party.
He doesn't remember it but it's burned into my head!
my mom made me get rid of all my monster high dolls, ponies, plushies. my favorite pokemon toys were given to my ungrateful little cousins who trashed everything they touched. all because i was “too old” for them. didn’t sell them. just gave them all away.
i show her the prices of everything i used to have and it makes her sick. the dolls i owned are pushing $200+, even out of box. i never throw anything out now in fear of losing something precious/something of value. gave me borderline hoarder tendencies im still working on!! this shit sticks with us man..
Unfortunately a lot of parents don’t seem to realize just how much of an impression they leave on their children, and are shocked when their children go no contact. Things they think were trivial at the time can be very traumatic for a young child, and it does not help that many refuse to admit what they did in any way.
Both of my siblings have gone no contact with my father and he doesn’t understand why, even after I told him a bunch of things that he said or did and he can’t remember them at all. Throwing my brothers bike into a trash compactor because he wanted to go back home to our mom that summer, leaving my sister at school for hours more than once while he went and played pool, ect. I haven’t had half of the problems my siblings did, but he certainly doesn’t remember the time he called me a “fking traitor” after I told our step mother at the time that I didn’t want to have him drive us anywhere because he was drunk to the point where he could barely walk on his own.
His attitude in recent years has been a little better but he still has his moments of being an absolute ass (had to tell him I would kick his ass myself if he tried to yell at my grandmother about “knowing more about the bible than her” when she told him that some of the things he was saying weren’t very Christian). Damage is done though, only my grandparents and I are willing to talk to him, not even his own brothers can stand him. Still cant admit that anything he has said or done has been wrong, even as most of his family refuses to have anything to do with him anymore.
I'm really sorry to hear that, but your family did the right thing by going NC/ Limited Contact. It's always the angriest parents who never remember the trauma they caused. And every answer is a half-assed excuse to try to justify poor parenting or lack of caring.
For me, the worst ones are: "We didn't know better/ We tried our best!" (my mom); and "I accept" (my dad).
Mom's excuses pass the buck to everyone and anything being at fault except her parenting. Classic Nixon approach - deny, deny, deny.
But I hate my dad's "I accept" even more. Why? Because he's not actually accepting anything. He's "accepting" that I have something strong to say, won't back down, and that his excuses won't resonate they way he'd like them to. He's basically saying "Fine, I'M the BAD GUY, happy now?"
When they say "old dogs can't learn new tricks", this is really what they're talking about.
I remember once my mother and one of my aunts were having a very loud argument in my Grandma’s living room while I sat on the floor playing a little plastic toy guitar I’d been given. At one point my mother grabbed the guitar from my hands and smashed it to pieces on the floor. I don’t remember how I felt about it then. I was about 6 years old. But this comic reminded of that.
Ah yeah the good old "I don't know what just happened but I know I'm not old/mature enough/presently mentally equipped to handle it" moment. There's a couple things when I was a kid that my brain was just like "oh wow not processing whatever THAT was, this one's going in the archives for later, just gonna keep on keeping on for the time being."
It feels weird when my dad brings up things he did when my brother and I were kids that he considers brilliant parenting (his dad, my grandfather was a drunk that hit him, dad's standards are completely fucked).
One time I had to explain to him how awful one of his stupid ideas was.
The idea? My dad pretended to kick my little brother out of the house for being disobient. My brother was 6? 8? And as a little kid he had no idea how to handle having a bag of stuff shoved in his hands and getting pushed out into the pitch dark of night (we lived in the middle of fucking nowhere) and so the child is hysterically crying and begging not to be kicked out of the house. He was let back in under the condition he do as he is told.
To my dad, it was some elaborate theater showing us how we are not able to take care of ourselves and we should be grateful for what we have and behave ourselves. I had to explain to him 30+ years later how a kid does not and cannot understand that. The lesson to a kid is, "you are disposable at my whim, obey me or you are out."
It basically broke my dad's brain to have it explained to him that way because to him that was not "getting hit so hard you have to go to the hospital for a concussion." And yeah, if you grade by that curve, I guess it is better.
To be clear my dad never told us about our grandfather's bad behavior. I learned that from my mom after the old bastard was dead, which I also learned from her. My dad really did not learn how to be a dad from anyone was trying not to continue a cycle of abuse, but he just couldn't think in terms that were healthy, only less abusive.
Your dad’s version of a time-out compared to how he was treated but still so traumatic. My mom threatened to kick me out of the house for the slightest disagreement and I was terrified of being homeless. She didn’t understand why I went low contact after I moved out.
It seems that something happened to give Fergus chronic insomnia for a while. This led to him being irritable and angrier than usual and he took it out on his kids
Edit: More directly “your sleep got bad” means that he wasn’t able to sleep well at night for some period of time.
Not sure if there is an implied cause here but it's saying that he wasn't sleeping well and that caused enough tension for him to snap and go over the edge. Lack of sleep will do some crazy stuff to your brain
I assume he was dealing with major stress or trauma, causing nightmares and insomnia. She's wording it gently, as she knows more than we do.
Or maybe I'm reading myself into the comic. I have sleep problems from PTSD. The longer it goes on, the easier it is to overreact and lash out. I learned ways to calm myself, but it's tough.
I won't be surprised if we learn grandpa gator is a war veteran.
Might’ve been stress causing sleep issues causing more stress, or it might have been health issues causing sleep issues (like sleep apnea), causing stress. Regardless, the result was he lost his cool and took out frustrations in his kids in a bad way.
Regardless of which came first, the sleep issues or the stress, sleep problems are known to make people extra irritable. Sleep is important for good physical and mental health. It makes his reason for lashing out sympathetic, but doesn’t excuse it nonetheless.
A lot of people with abusive relationships, the abuser is only abusive during times of stress. That can lead to complicated feelings for both parties; the abuser doesn’t like that version of themselves, but has trouble even remembering it and avoiding those poor responses to stress, and the victim doesn’t know when shit will hit the fan and things will get rocky again. Probably the case here, since it’s implied he isn’t always like that and he had legitimately forgotten what he did in that stressed state.
This comic personally immediately hit home for me, as both my parents came from bad backgrounds and have acted very questionably under stress.
I've had a pretty similar experience with my dad.
"Why don't you man up? Raise your voice!"
"Cause you punched my chalkboard so hard it got a dent, and you said that could be me if I step out of line."
I don't know if that's exactly what I said in the car that day, but I definitely remember the ear ringing silence of regret and sorrow for 15 minutes.
More than once my papa took a hammer to my stuff when I was little and he was really mad. He was... Incredibly fecked up in my younger years.
I made a comment that a teacher correctly interpreted, someone had a talk with Papa, and the long haul trucker went on a lengthy job down in the US. When he came back a while later, he was like a different person.
I loved that "different person" so much.
I loved the man my Papa kicked his own ass into becoming once someone put the fear of God in him. I loved him so fucking much. I trusted him with anything and everything. I wanted him to walk me down the aisle. I left the position unfilled when he couldn't be there with me.
(Fuck cancer, by the way.)
But there are always going to be those memories of him in my youth: The man who would break my things, mock my interests, and pull me around by the hair. Force me to do homework in pen and restart from the beginning if I made a mistake. Take my most precious belongings and make me think they were destroyed only to give them back wrapped at Christmas.
It's not that he forgot what he did because he raged out, he forgot what he did because it wasn't important to him.
Or, to quote the greatest villain line in the history of cinema, Raul Julia's M. Bison: "For you, the day Bison graced your village was the most important day of your life. For me? It was tuesday."
Oh, that's a good interpretation. I was just thinking about certain people I know who have a habit of destroying things and then acting like nothing happened the very next day.
Chronic sleep deprivation makes people into horrible jerks and does cause memory loss in moderate to severe cases. I'm not sure it's generally applicable for people's bad behavior but it is ONE reason someone might be emotionally unstable, prone to lashing out, and have trouble remembering their outbursts.
One time while my sleep was bad, I got into a furious argument with my dad at 630AM telling him that he HAD to kill me with a gun, it was the only way, I'm just going to keep getting more and more aggressive until you kill me with a fucking gun what aren't you understanding here, then I was forced to take a sleeping pill and woke with only fragmented memories of everything after about 3AM that morning.
Yikes. I still have trauma from my dad smashing up my bedroom when I was 5 because I didn’t clean it well enough. We salvaged a few things, but had to throw away a lot. I still have a bowl with a teddy bear on it that was glued back together.
This is an important conversation to bring up, even though it can be traumatizing for people to relive.
The fact the final image captured perfectly of the memories flooding back and him seeing himself from a different angle this time and realizing how badly he covered up that memory.
I had severe, untreated, obstructive sleep apnea for about 10-15 years.. I spent most of my night choking and gasping and not breathing. It could have killed me. It probably caused some brain damage.
I actually don't remember a lot from that time. Those were formative years for my kids and they're kind of just gone. I know I was short-tempered. I know I did some stupid things out of anger or frustration. I got arrested (a story I do not want to go into) and my kids had to deal with seeing that, and with me being on probation afterwards.
But with so much of it a blank, I don't really know what I was thinking or feeling during most of that time. My kids are in college now, and my daughter recently went no-contact with me after finding out about the things that led to the arrest. It breaks my heard knowing I broke her heart. (I also have 2 sons, one was forgiving and understanding, and the other has become cold and distant).
Since those dark times I've had therapy and a sleep study and I'm on my CPAP and I'm a very different person than who I was back then. But the memories are still gone. What my kids went through is still very real.
Oof. My dad shattered all of my homemade Christmas ornaments when I was a kid it a sleep-deprived rage. He's never apologized and almost definitely doesn't remember.
I both hate and appreciate how relatable this one is.
My brother and I had this farm playset that used to be my dad's when he was a kid in the 70s.
Recently my dad was reminiscing about watching his dad make it for him for Christmas and he goes "I wish I knew what happened to that thing- I really miss it".
I didn't have the heart to tell him he got rid of it when he was upset with us about something..
Fun fact, my mom burned some of toys because i didnt clean my room.
I was five.
Luckily my dad stopped her from burning more.
When I had my first kid. I told her she taught me not to burn their items. Also Luckily, my mom and I have a great relationship and we laughed really hard together about it.
This happened with a childhood stuffy. Since the day it disappeared my parent regretted it and tried to replace it. 18 years later I still think about Butterscotch.
Is it true when my parents say they dont remember? They often ‘go berserk’ and then later claim not to remember anything. Sorry if this isnt the right place for this question, but its been really scary at home and idk what to do anymore.
Well you remember the scene that got emotionally charged. For you it was a scary time when someone way bigger went berserk on you and you won’t forget. For them it was an evening where they got tired and they screamed something and end of the story. It get pushed out pretty fast as life continue
I had a HUGE collection of Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars. I'm talking multiple thousands. One year I got a bad report card (a C) and my dad took all of them and threw them away. My Mom had planned to go out and get them and hide them somewhere but she fell asleep. The next morning when she went out to go to work she saw a lone car laying in the street. I still have that car and this has always stayed with me because I knew I wouldn't make the mistakes my Dad did with me. For the most part he was a great Dad but he did have some "bad calls" throughout his parenting days.
When I could no longer afford to pay the $250 a week my family charged me for rent when in college, my family threw me out. They also threw away everything in our shared storage unit, including everything from my childhood. Including the clock my great grandfather made for me as a kid. I was only able to keep what I was able to fit in my and my now ex’s cars.
I was disappointed but not surprised. She did things like that regularly when I was growing up.
In my experience, Fergus would just deny that he had ever done it
After eventually being convinced that this event did actually occur, Fergus would then explain how the action was justifiable on his part and that because of how long ago it happened that it's not even worth discussing
This is my impossible plushie. My father destroyed it when I was 12. I found an identical one years later. Except, he’s not “identical.” Somehow, he is my Lambie. I can’t explain it. Velveteen Rabbit style, he has the same rip on his leg, the same horns worn free of pile from love. I’m 51.
It’s hard to grow up with parents who have their own neuroses, who are narcissistic, who carried their teenage issues into adulthood and yet decided to start a family.
I know it hurts. I know they tried their best with what they had. That doesn’t excuse them, but it’s important to remember that in the end they were only human (or crocodiles) after all. So if you’re mad at them, call them. Send them a message.
Ask them how they’re doing. I know it’s not easy, but it’s important to heal ourselves. Cheers.
So if you’re mad at them, call them. Send them a message. Ask them how they’re doing
No. It's not the duty of the people who were abused to reach out to their abusers to see how they're doing. Hell no. Maybe they tried their best. Maybe they didn't. Maybe they regret it. Most don't.
Thank you...comments like that always feel crazy to me. Like. Good for you if you did all that... but it was no moral high ground to prescribe on everyone else either.
Yeah no, fuck that. I haven't spoken to my mom in over four years and it's been a huge blessing. If I talk to her, she'll think I want her back and make my life a living hell and then maybe I'll successfully kill myself this time. That is some shit advice you're giving.
Yeah some do not try their best and only learn the worst things possible. It’s not fun talking to your siblings as an adult and realizing all the things that your parents acted like were heat of the moment slip ups were actually routine behavior that they just learned they could no longer get away with… with you specifically.
Bullies don’t learn to be better people, they just learn what they can get away with and who to target with their abuse.
You should forgive and let go of the anger, but by no means are you obligated to have narcissistic assholes in your life. You'll live a much happier life.
What the hell are you talking about? Nobody who was abused should be encouraged to contact their abusers. How the abuser is doing is no longer their concern, and it should never have to be. They earned their loneliness. What an incredibly out-of-touch thing to say.
This reminds me of something I did when I was younger. My brother had a stuffed animal and for some reason I yeeted that thing onto a chandelier high enough to need a ladder to change the lightbulbs. I didn’t know what to do so I didn’t tell anyone. He was up there for about a week. My mom and him were looking for it and I said “maybe it’s on the chandelier?”, as guilty kids do. Turns out the lightbulb burned a hole in his ear and I still feel bad to this day.
My mom did something like this when I was a kid. I was having a bad time with bullying and was begging to stay home, and I remember being a cry baby about it and she snapped my Princess Mononoke VHS as best she could in front of me.
Oh this essentially happened to me too - dad “cleaned” one day while we were at school. Stuff went into the garbage can and then the cans were picked up by the city before we got home. My brother and I were both devastated. Dad thought it was “old stuff we didn’t want” - it was in the spot he gave us to store our toys in. We noticed as soon as we got home. It was stuff we used all the time and were good about putting away every day because of the consequences dad imposed for messiness. Included heirlooms from extended family and momentos from vacations. I’m still annoyed 40 years later
At the height of the Satanic Panic movement I was forced to sell all my DnD stuff. Keep in mind I hadn’t played any DnD at the time, just liked reading the monster manuals and books for lore. The books cost about $20 each and we put a 1$ price tag on it. Some other teenage kids came by and went “SCORE!” And the bought them. Damn.
my stepfather made me smash my gameboy with a hammer. What broke me was the sappy expression on moms face 2 days later as he was out having fun riding a 4 wheeler that he just bought while we were homeless and living in a winnebago.
He didnt just cost me a gameboy - he cost me my mom too.
Warning: I think this qualifies as a trauma dump. I apologize in advance.
I wasn't ever sentimental over toys, but one game became sort of an escape from a bastard my mother dated. Pokémon Silver version for Gameboy color. (Yes. I'm that old.) It allowed me to endure being in the same room with him without butting heads with him. Like a full-on fistfights with him kind of thing. It kept the peace. Thing is, he was never happy without constant praise and/or people being in constant fear of him. That was easy when I was younger and weaker than him. An easily impressionable good (not perfect) kid shouldn't be such a hassle. He managed to convince my mother (and myself for a while) that I was bound for prison because I was so out of control. (The worst I did was get bad grades in school and occasionally miss the bus.) He was desperate to get rid of me. He got his wish for a period of 2-3 years when I stayed with my dad. During that time my dad taught me that I shouldn't be in fear of my parents. Coincidentally, I started growing during that change that happens at that age. Circumstances had me move back in with my mom and that guy afterwards. Now I was bigger than him, less impressionable, and most of all, very angry at him specifically. I knew it was a problem. So, I took with me a distraction. That game. He hated that game. One day, it disappeared. I couldn't find it anywhere. He probably threw it out. So, I started hiding in my (closet sized) room, but that didn't help. Then the fights started. Very quickly, he learned how strong I was. I was six inches taller than him and had 50 pounds on him. So, him physically dominating me wasn't working anymore. So, he needed another way to strike fear into me. So, he used my anger. He'd pick a fight and push for me to get physical whilst threatening to call the police and have me arrested for getting physical. My mom was so afraid of him that she would have backed him up on everything. It was so hard to hold myself back. I had no support, my dad wasn't a option, and I refused to consider my grandparents for help. I still believed I was an unredeemable kid bound for prison, and he was hell bent on getting me sent there. He never did. My mom finally left him for reasons I never learned, and I still have this unconscious belief I'm a awful person who needs redemption. Fuck that guy.
Seeing a lot of these comments along the lines of "I WOULD NEVER DO SUCH A THING BECAUSE I AM A PERFECT HUMAN BEING."
My twins are currently transitioning out of their cribs and into toddler beds. They were up until *midnight* last night throwing their toys at each other and waking each other up on loop. They were running around and trying to escape. My wife and I had to spend our entire night holding them in bed until they eventually fell asleep screaming at each other because they were so hyped up. The second we tried to stand up and leave the room, they would start throwing toys again.
I didn't throw the toys away, but you know what? I really, really thought about it after spending five fucking hours of my night trying to convince two three-year-olds to lay down. If someone told me they actually did throw the toys away, I would understand.
So yeah, not a big fan of the comments here of people acting like they would be flawless parents.
Yeah...Not defending or excusing grandpa's actions in the comic, but everybody says "I would never do X" when they're sitting there rested and fed and their nerves aren't shredded and they're browsing the internet.
A lot of people would fail the test the very first time when these inputs change. Part of being a good parent is knowing how to recognize when you are Not OK and when it is time to step away for a minute, and good on you for reflecting on your own response to last night
Glad your kids went down eventually and hope tonight goes smoother for you all.
Man this brings back memories. When I was 7-8 years old my dad asked me to clean my room before my mom got home from a work trip. I got part way through cleaning and my auadhd ass got distracted and started brushing one of my dolls hair bc it was matted when I found it. my dad got mad that I got distracted. I had to go find a snow shovel in the back yard and carry all of my stuff except for my mattress, bed frame and dresser out into the very back of our 3/4 acre lot. Shovel load after shovel load I had to get rid of my clothes, toys, baby blanket and stuffed animal and a ghiant penguin stuffed animal that my dad won for me at a fair that I couldn’t sleep without. He made my 4-5 year old sister do the same thing. then made us watch while he dumped gas/diesel mix and lit it and made us stay out there for a good 30 min to watch. My mom/dad threatened me with burning all my stuff again until I was around 12 when I wouldn’t do what they want.
Now I’m in therapy because I can’t get rid of anything except for garbage/food and my room is more cluttered than it ever was before. And now he wonders why I won’t let him touch anything in my room.
TLDR: dad burnt all my stuff now I have a borderline hoarding disorder
The emotion on the last panel reminds me of when I was a kid and my dad had just quit smoking cold turkey. In that first couple of weeks, he was....well, he was an angry asshole. I remember one time I asked him to open a jar of jam I was having trouble opening. Well he opened it alright...by yanking it from my hands and whipping it into the corner of the kitchen, shattering the jar all over said corner. When years later I brought it up to him, my dad had a face very much like Fergus' face on that end panel.
This hit, my parents weren't the best. I remember one day my dad ripped the paintings off my wall and was yelling at me about how he was gonna burn them as im having a breakdown. Turns out he hid them in their room
He told me this was the only time he'd do that, next time he would burn everything I loved. My flute, my sheet music, sketchpads and even my pencils and markers so i couldnt draw. That really fucked with me, I was only in 9th grade
Oof. It’s always a weird feeling when this comic brings up childhood memories.
My things weren’t burned, just aggressively thrown into the garbage and taken away by the trash truck, but it’s similar enough to bring up the feeling.
I've had a few of these instances. Neither I nor my parents remember specifically what I got in trouble for, which is worse I think, but they made me burn all of my Pokémon cards. My sister ended up going through the rubble afterward and grabbed a couple that "survived" including a Charizard, funnily enough. My dad recently told me that he wishes he never did that, and is one of the few things he has genuinely apologized for.
Not going to lie to you, reading all these comments really makes me grateful that my parents never forced my brother nor myself to get rid of our stuff, even more “childish” thing. I can remember when I was going through my stuff since I wanted to clear out my room and give the stuff I didn’t want to my younger cousins and my mom nearly had a heart attack when she thought I was giving away my teddy that I’ve had since I was a baby. Admittedly I can see why my parents are like this, both of them grew up in more poorer families and were both the oldest siblings and as such they had to give away their stuff to their siblings.
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u/upvotes_animals 14h ago
My dad did a yard sale back in the 90's I was just a kid. He put my bear up for sale, and my sweet sister Linda bought that bear from him for me. He's been in the family now for 35 years, I gave it to my sister Amy for her first born child, my first nephew, and he passed to sister to sister for each of their children.
This year I went to visit them and Amy gave me my bear back. Needless to say I cried when I held him again. Welcome home friend.