18. It’s The Least Wonderful Time Of The Year
My mom decided that she didn’t want to receive any Christmas presents one year and made sure to tell me and my two brothers. I suggested to her instead that we donate what we would have spent to charity in her name. She said she was fine with that if that’s what we wanted to do. So that’s what I did. I sent her a nice little card and the info for the charities that I had donated to.
That way, I figured she would enjoy being able to see that her decision had helped some good organizations out. Nope. Turns out Mom was not happy. “Why didn’t you just send me a gift card if you weren’t gonna buy me anything! You ruined Christmas for me!” I was totally distraught. I sent her a screenshot of the conversation we had and circled the place where she said she’d be fine with my decision to donate in her name. Her infuriating response made me want to scream: “I don’t remember that. I deleted those texts.”
I lost my cool, told her it was her own fault for raising me to do as I’m told, and told her that next time she should just not say anything if she’s gonna change her mind and not tell us about it. And then we didn’t speak for three entire months. This was two and a half years ago and I still have not gotten over it. It was one of the worst incidents of my life.