Comments (49)

1. 1. My mom loves to talk about her sex life in front of my sister, me, and our husbands!!

   2. I lost touch with a really good friend in college. I spotted a picture of him on facebook & requested to be his friend. After a few months of chatting, we met up, had lunch, he met my husband, and now we’re just as close as we were in college. He even wanted my opinion about him joining the military & I’ve been a huge cheerleader for him ever since! We call or text each other on a regular basis.

   posted by Heather on 8-6-2010 at 2:44 pm

2. 1.What’s the most embarrassing thing…

   Not the most embarrassing but still funny…When I was a freshman in college I got written up for drinking underage, and I was very worried to have to tell my parents. (Religious background pretty strict). They were so worried by my tone they were relieved to find out that it was only a underage drinking ticket and legitimately thought I was/had either A
   -Coming out of the closet
   B-Got a girl pregnant
   C-Got kicked out of school
   —My parents clearly had confidence in me.

   2.Tell us about an old friendship you’ve rekindled

   …Unfortunately, a few ex gfs that were better off exes

   3.How would you spend it?

   I’d ask Warren Buffet to invest it for 3 years until I could properly vet out all the proper charities to give to.

   posted by Dan on 8-6-2010 at 2:50 pm

3. I’m pretty sure my mom lives to be embarrassing. Once, while she was waiting in the car for my sister and inexplicably eating an apple, my then-boyfriend (now husband) unknowingly pulled into the parking spot next to her. Thinking she’d scare him, she threw her apple core at his window … except his window was open and it hit him in the face.
   She’s also accidentally mooned him thinking it was just me in the house; had a temper tantrum at a resort in the Bahamas because she wanted a specific, unattainable ice cream on a brownie; and decided to try out some homeopathic ear trouble remedies in the middle of Target (this involved trying to balance on a rolled up yoga mat while shaking her head around).
   I haven’t even touched on her odd outfits. At least she’s not boring, right?

   posted by Jenny on 8-6-2010 at 2:55 pm

4. 1. I have a feeling my parents have actually done worse things than the one I’m about to describe but I’ve blocked them all out. However, my mother once called from work and asked me to put a roast in the microwave. Not knowing whether she wanted it cooked (in which case I would remove the paper) or thawed (in which case I wouldn’t), I asked her if I should take the paper off. Turns out she wanted it cooked and proceeded to tell EVERYBODY she met for the next two decades about how I was so bad in the kitchen that I didn’t even know to take the paper off a roast before it was cooked! Haha! No matter how many times I have added my part of the story to this, she continues to tell it and people continue to think I’m that much of an idiot. *sigh*

   2. I was chatting on a parenting forum when someone mentioned having gone to the same college from which I had graduated several years earlier. I commented on it and it turned out we had gone at the same time so I asked which dorm she lived in. Yes, it was the same (very small) where I had lived. So we took our conversation to private email and it turned out to be the friend I had been searching for on Facebook 3 days earlier. And her best friend? Was my first roommate, who I hadn’t been able to locate either. Not only are we all friends again but our kids have gotten to be friends with each other.

   posted by Mother Chat on 8-6-2010 at 2:57 pm

5. 1. I used to write a lot when I was younger. I even came up with a pen name for myself. It’s too embarassing to let anyone know what it was, it was that stupid. So my mom used to always tell my girlfriends that I wanted to be called by that old pen name. Not true and totally embarassing. I used to get so mad her.
   2. The internet helps a lot of people stay in touch with a lot of old friends through Facebook, etc. But I once had a friend in college who was really into computers. We were really close but we lost touch afterwards and now he has vanished from the face of the earth. No Myspace page, no Facebook page. Nothing. Just gone. I’ve kept in touch with a lot our mutual friends over the years, and they all say the same thing. No one knows where he is, no one can find him. Not even the all powerful internet can track this guy down. I miss him and hope he’s ok. Anyone know a guy named Brandon Marlow from Atlanta? More specifically, Alpharetta. One of the smartest people I ever knew.
   3. That question is too tough to answer. There are too many deserving charities. I wouldn’t know where to start.

   posted by Eric on 8-6-2010 at 3:03 pm

6. Eric, I had a similar experience. I had a friend who was also one of the smartest and most interesting people I had ever met. Her creativity and intellect was just stunning. She moved in our junior year of high school and we lost touch. Of all people in the world, I figured she must be referenced SOMEWHERE online but no. Not a trace. So if anyone knows an Amy Lashmit, by all means, point me in her direction.

   posted by Mother Chat on 8-6-2010 at 3:07 pm

7. My parents decided that in their retirement, they would take on a new business venture. They decided they would form a “troup” of traveling strippers who would be exotically appealing because they would be of different races. They were auditioning strippers out of their home with my 15 year old sister home. My mother was even designing and sewing costumes for these strippers, not to mention humiliatingly dogging my brother to be their limo driver. Yep. That’s my extremely embarrassing parent story.

   posted by CouldaWouldaShoulda on 8-6-2010 at 3:10 pm

8. 1. My father is one of these people that doesn’t give two you-know-whats about what people think of him. This is something I greatly admire and aspire to as an adult but as a teenager it made me wish I were raised by wolves. Case in point: working at a deli in high school, one day I sliced a rather sizeable chunk of flesh from my thumb working the meat slicer. Boss calls my parents to come take me to emergency room. Parents had been working in the yard so they just hop in the car and rush over as fast as possible. Dad walks in, in his “working in the yard” clothes- red shorts that had long since faded in the the wash to, yes, hot pink, and stretched and shrunk to embarassingly ill-fitting proportions. In his panic he begins yelling my name….. this was right in the middle of a lunch rush!

   1.a. (don’t have anything for #2)- I was about 12 and grocery shopping with my dad. Being the overgrown child he is, he was showing me how to get a running start and leap onto the back of the shopping cart for what he called the GroceryStore 500. Although he is a very intelligent man he didn’t think of the amount of groceries it would take to counter his grown-man-weight and basically flipped the cart back and over onto himself. Loudly. I have never exited a grocery store faster than I did that day.

   3. Shoes! No, totally kidding. I don’t have a specific idea but I would love to see a project funded that required contributions from people all over the globe. Different nations, religions, languages and cultures coming together for the betterment of humanity. Something incredibly ambitious and requiring massive leaps of faith from people but it would be far-reaching and would create a legacy for future generations to hold up. Uh…so basically world peace, right?

   posted by BorgQueen on 8-6-2010 at 3:19 pm

9. 1. My father is actually a big fan of the Jonas Brothers…enough said

   posted by Sara on 8-6-2010 at 3:19 pm

10. 1. My mom had a tendency when we were kids to yell across the supermarket. She got it from my grandmother who, if standing in the middle of a store and can’t find an employee to help her, she stands there and yells “help!” as loud as she can. It’s difficult to embarass me.

    2. I managed to get in contact with the majority of people I was friends with in highschool, who I hadn’t talked to in almost 10 years. Most of them went into the military right out of school, so we lost touch quick, especially with 9/11, but the best person I got in touch with was my ex roommate. We still hang out.

    3. I would work on expanding a program we have in Fort Worth for helping the homeless. The ones who are willing and able are given furnished apartments and connected with social services to help get them back on their feet and get them jobs and training. They only need help for about a year after entering the program. I work for a church in the city, so I see a lot of homeless people who have nowhere else to turn.

    posted by Tinkerschnitzel on 8-6-2010 at 3:35 pm

11. People should make a website solely dedicated to posting up names of people that we lost contact with. Something like Lostbook or something. Nothing that involves police investigations of course, just wanting to reconnect with old friends and such.

    posted by Angel on 8-6-2010 at 3:40 pm

12. 1. My mom and her sister had me (a girl) and my cousin (a boy) just 5 days apart. He and I were raised almost like twins for the first few years. We had pictures taken in matching outfits, etc. In all of these pics, my mother was worried that I’d be mistaken for a boy, so she would scotch-tape a bow to my bald little head. You can totally see the tape in almost every pic of me as a baby. We also ended up being the flower girl and ring bearer for EVERY wedding in our family for the next ten years.

    2. I’ve gotten in touch with many extended family members. I have a HUGE family on both sides, and it’s been fun to get in touch with the few others who actually got the hell outta Texas like I did.

    3. Too many to list. Clean water and farming projects for Third World countries. Gay youth organizations. The USO. Education grants for everyone who wants to go to college.

    posted by JC on 8-6-2010 at 4:00 pm

13. 2. When I was in elementary school, I had a pen-pal with the name “L” Jones from England. We had formed a great friendship over the years, but once we both graduated from school, we started to lose touch. I wrote a letter a couple years ago, but it came back to me undelivered.

    I decided to do a search on Facebook, but obviously with the last name “Jones” this is almost impossible. However, I did remember her childhood friend’s name, which was a super strange name. Luckily, she had a page. I emailed her and got an answer in a couple days. While they had grown apart, she knew that my friend had gone on to marry. She was now “L” Wilson! From one common name to another! I had to email the girl again to find out what university she had gone to and I was FINALLY able to find her that way! We’ve been able to re-connect (only through Facebook for now) but I’d love to visit her when I have the money! I hope to scan her old letters to me and mail them to her.

    posted by Eulalie on 8-6-2010 at 4:06 pm

14. 1)um, I think the most awkward conversation I had with my mom, ever, was back during the Clinton administration when his…disgressions…were all over the news. I was in 7th and 8th grade during the whole cigar/Monica/”they did WHAT?!” situation and this coincided with a WEIRD piece of news from OK about a woman who performed a, decidedly adult, act on her dog. I know, horrifying. So, this brought about the realization to my mom that I may not be fully versed in these activities…, so she took it upon herself to ask me if I knew what “oral sex” was. Of course I’d had the internet for a few years and cable, so I was all over it, but how do you tell your mom that? I vaguely remember freezing, studdering and her telling me as I covered my face and walked out of the room.

    Of course, a decade now we have a relationship where this type of conversation is still weird, but more normal than it was when I was 14.

    2) Well, ironically my rekindled internet realtionship ORIGINATED on the internet. When I was in middle school I stumbled over an Xfiles fan group with several girls who were also my age and we formed a strong relationship for a few years (fell apart as we went to college in the time before facebook existed/was a huge deal, etc). Well, I found members of the group via facebook in the last few years and have really reconnected with one person in particular. We e-mail each other throughout the day at work and text/call for advice frequently. She served as a huge resource/influence when I decided to go to grad school and I am forever grateful for that.

    3) Instead of just donating funds to charity, I’d subscribe to the “teach a man to fish” method and have skills/trade taught to those in need. There’s a very successful method that was used in Africa where women were given the tools to start businesses and they’ve become very successful (have their own money, pride with products/workmanship, can hire those in the tribe AND pay them to work, etc). I feel like that would be the best way to spend the funds.

    I’ve been busy at work that when I started to type this there were only two responses. I can’t wait to see how many have posted now that I’ve had a chance to finish my comments!

    posted by okiemelissa on 8-6-2010 at 4:12 pm

15. 1. My mom was a single parent so money was always tight. When I was in middle school, she decided to start a clown business and of course, she recruited myself and my younger sister to be clowns with her. As a teen in middle school, I was so embarrassed. She did a great job and it continued into my high school years. I still call it the ultimate form of child abuse. There’s nothing like working as a clown at a festival and come across a ton of your peers. :-P
    3. I work as a victim’s advocate, specifically for elder victims. Many domestic violence victims don’t leave a bad situation because they don’t want to leave their pets behind (which are typically killed for revenge by the abuser), especially elder victims. I’d build a large shelter for domestic violence victims where their pets are welcome too.

    posted by Kim on 8-6-2010 at 4:15 pm

16. I was searching Facebook for a guy I’d worked with on campus during my freshman year of college, but I ended up stumbling across the profile of a girl I knew he’d dated. I found him in the list of her friends, but it took me another week to work up the courage to friend request him. In the five months that have passed, we’ve seen each other four times (he’s on the East Coast, I’m on the West) and we plan to see a string of Dave Matthews concerts in the SF Bay Area at the end of the month. :)

    posted by Corinne on 8-6-2010 at 4:22 pm

17. 1) My mother is still convinced that I’m gay, won’t stop making nasty comments/jokes about it after 40+ years. Would not stop pressuring girlfriends to “straighten” me out! I would not bring home girlfriends because mom was convinced I had HIV positive boyfriends hidden all over town.

    2) Most of the people from high school are basically the same ex-jocks, jerks, and bullies they where then. Went to 10th & 20th reunions, everyone had exactly the same personality, only 20 years older (me included).

    3a) Would first refuse money from a crook like Gates. Otherwise would invest in the next generation and instill a work ethic: education, parenting skills, drug rehab, job skills, jobs for everyone, and public transit. You would have to volunteer to get welfare, etc.

    posted by Hetero Man on 8-6-2010 at 4:25 pm

18. 1. My father is in the process of becoming a certified astrologer, which he has tons of enthusiasm for (probably pent up from 30+ years of government accounting). Which is fine, except when he uses a polite expression of interest as an invitation to wax poetic on the finer points of an obscure part of astrology. That and he wanted to name me Frodo.

    2. Could have turned a friendship from high school into a romance but didn’t act fast enough. She’s married now and I suspect used to date my former (and evil boss).

    3. First world AIDS and organization that support queer spirituality. And if I’m feeling selfish I’d set up a foundation that would endow all my further studies.

    posted by Becky on 8-6-2010 at 4:26 pm

19. 1) My parents are okay, so no horrifyingly embarrassing stories.
    2)None
    3) That’s a hard one. Am I allowed to divide it? Then some to Children Miracle Network, some to Breast Cancer Research, some to Cancer Research, and the rest to AIDS research.

    posted by Sara in Al on 8-6-2010 at 4:54 pm

20. 1) My mother is a bigot, apparently, and after hearing “Everyone’s a little bit racist” from Avenue Q, proceeded to more than prove the point in front of my wife.

    posted by Andy on 8-6-2010 at 5:25 pm

21. 1. My dad called me one day to ask me what a word meant because he thought his friend was using it incorrectly, but he didn’t actually know the meaning. The word was coital. The phone call ended pretty quickly after I explained that, yes, there was only one definition.

    posted by Liz on 8-6-2010 at 5:28 pm

22. 1) Truly, my mom has never done anything particularly embarassing to me (my father is a different story, we’ll skip that subject for now). Everyone has a story of parental embarassment but honestly, not really from me.

    2) I was on the speech team in high school and really hit it off with someone from another school in the same category as me. We lost touch after our first year in college, but not after hearing that she had gotten married. Over the years, I’d lost all contact information of hers and could not for the life of me remember what her new husband’s last name was. Not only that, but searching for her maiden name was near impossible because it was only slightly less common than Smith. Eventually, it turns out that a coworker has a friend who works with her and pointed her back in my direction. Small world.

    3) First off, the Animal Humane Society is very near and dear to my heart, so that would be a good start. Beyond that, I’d like to set up a foundation for the lesser-publicized cancers. I certainly don’t want to disparage the great work that breast cancer, leukemia, lung cancer, etc. research organizations do (because they do awesome work and are among some of the most noble organizations I can think of), but a very close friend of mine recently died of bladder cancer and I cannot even find a foundation raising much awareness of such a thing (even though it’s the fourth most common type of cancer in men in the U.S., ninth for women). So maybe a foundation in his honor as well.

    posted by J.D. on 8-6-2010 at 5:35 pm

23. Along the lines of looking for old friends… Have any of you seen Mayumi Mizumera Lockett or her husband Rich (Richard) Lockett? Mayumi was my college roommate and I can’t seem to find her anywhere.

    posted by veetie on 8-6-2010 at 6:26 pm

24. #2. When I was 9, my parents split up and me, my mom, brother and a sister moved into a condo complex in Richmond, BC. I met another little girl who visited her grandparents there annually from Hawaii. We were the BEST of friends, she was the most amazing person ever. I found her via an Internet site her mom had put up, and we later connected thru Facebook. How many people can say that they found their best childhood friend… 35 years later??? Wierdly, our lives turned out oddly similar in experience – we are both late moms – and we share the same sense of humour. Makes you believe in fate!

    posted by Mare on 8-6-2010 at 6:51 pm

25. 1- They made me live on Long Island.

    posted by Joe Maz on 8-6-2010 at 8:31 pm

26. #1. During my sophomore year in high school, squirrels were ravaging our garden in the backyard and my dad bought a BB gun for “rodent population control.” One night, because it was really nice outside, I was watching a movie my portable DVD player in the said backyard with my then-boyfriend. My dad comes home from work, cracks the window open, and proceeds to shoot at least ten shots into the air (not directed at us) with his gun. My boyfriend just about wet himself. He called his mom and asked for a ride home as soon as she could get there… I asked my dad what on Earth was he thinking, to which he replied “rodent population control.”

    posted by Megan on 8-6-2010 at 9:20 pm

27. 1. Every summer until the age of 12, my mother registered me for swimming lessons. I am sure many of you are thinking this is awesome parenting. However, each year she would register my brother (who is two years younger than me) for the exact same level. Also, she never really understood what level actually fit our ability level, so she always signed us up for a lessons at least two or three levels below where we should have been placed. This means every summer my brother and I would stroll up to a class with people sometimes half our age. The instructors would see we had no business being there once we got in the water, so we would be sent to another group the following week. This would happen for a couple weeks until my brother reached the appropriate level. Then I would be moved forward because I was more advanced than him, of course. It doesn’t sound so bad in writing, but this truly embarrassing for me to have to prove myself against younger kids! I still remember the last couple of years when I technically placed out of all the levels and so I was placed in this pre-lifeguard class. We would tread water without our hands for long periods of time and do a lot of grueling exercises that were nowhere near the level of fun swim time that my brother in his lower-leveled class had. I was also at least two years older than the next youngest student. It was torture. I made my mother promise never to send me to class again. Looking back at it all, even she feels bad for me!

    2.My favorite reconnect via Facebook unfriended me recently! I am still happy she found me though. I had waited many years to thank her for a letter she wrote me when we were 16 and a tragic event occurred in my family. She saved the letter and then gave it to me at our high school graduation. I was never able to thank her for kind words her until she found me years later.

    3. I would devote the money to teacher professional development and bringing schools up to speed in the technology race. Education recently placed dead last in a survey about different fields’ use of technology (56 were surveyed in all). That is tragic.

    posted by bteach on 8-6-2010 at 9:34 pm

28. 1. My father is a consistent level of embarrassing. I don’t blink an eye when he gets into fights in public, ignores posted signs (including “No Animals Allowed” and “No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service”) or throws raging fits in front of strangers about the quality of the service at Walmart, how many stoplights there are, how much toilet paper his children go through and that the family cat eats too many chipmunks. He seriously has no filter. Also, he sleep walks hardcore so that sometimes he leaves the house and wakes up various places around town. He also has the sense of humor of an eight-year-old: He loves a good poop joke.

    posted by Lynnie on 8-6-2010 at 9:42 pm

29. @ Megan
    That sounds like something my dad did once, too!

    posted by Lynnie on 8-6-2010 at 9:44 pm

30. My mother did her “Fonzie” imitation in front of my friends – well into the 80′s. She was just so embarrassing and she wouldn’t stop it.

    After a while, she wondered where all my friends were……

    No cute reconnection stories.

    Money: I’d start a geek company for husband so he’s out from underfoot, and I would start a sort of animal compound for ALL stray animals to have a safe and happy forever home, and have vet school students intern there and end up being much more than the crazy neighborhood cat lady.

    posted by Dianne on 8-6-2010 at 10:41 pm

31. 1. My father embarrassed me in front of 300 people during my senior year of high school. My birthday happened to fall on the first day of school. I’d already been at school for the previous 3 weeks for marching band, though. My father arranged with the band director to sing happy birthday to me in front of the ENTIRE marching band, color guard, dance team, and all of the band directors. He wasn’t content to just sing to me at the front of the room. He had to climb onto the drum major’s podium so that everyone could see him. I believe my face turned several different shades of red. And ten years later at my high school reunion, my band friends were still talking about it!

    2. The internet allowed me to find my oldest friend. Our moms were in child birth classes together, and she was born 12 days after me. We lost touch when my family left Washington. I found her on Myspace a few years ago, and it has been great to reconnect and see where life has taken us.

    Social media has really allowed me to maintain friendships that I made while traveling with the military.

    3. I have no idea what I would suggest for the money. I think I would want some of it to be earmarked for early childhood education programs like Head Start which is an organization close to my heart since they did so much for me and my kiddo when I was a freshly divorced, homeless, out of work single mom. Actually, I think I’d want to use most of it towards different educational programs for all levels, kindergarten all the way up to doctoral candidates. Everyone can always use a little help for school.

    posted by KJ on 8-6-2010 at 11:13 pm

32. My oddest reconnection story concerns my wife. When we were dating, over 30 years ago, she told of the time when she, then a little girl, wandered with a couple of her siblings onto the airport runway in Portugal where her father was the manager. One of the airport workers rushed out with a jeep to pick them up just before a plane came in to land.

    About ten years ago we were at the christening of her youngest brother’s first child and met his in-laws (he is the only one among my wife and her nine siblings who married another Portuguese).

    She proceeded to tell her airport story — whereupon the father-in-law quietly announced that he had been the jeep driver on that occasion.

    posted by Gollum on 8-6-2010 at 11:43 pm

33. My mom, brother, and I were at the top of the Sears Tower in Chicago last fall. My mother is scared to death of heights, so she stayed well away from the windows. My 23-year old younger brother and I love heights, so we made a beeline for the Plexiglass-enclosed box sticking out from the side of the tower; essentially, you’re standing over Chicago with only a few inches of Plexiglass between you and oblivion. Naturally, my brother decided to jump up and down a couple of times. In a panic, my mother screamed out “John Michael Smith, you get out of there right now!” There had to be nearly 200 people on that observation floor, and they all looked at the crazy woman screaming at her adult children. My brother and I were absolutely mortified.
    This is why you don’t vacation with your parents as adults.

    posted by janeeyre316 on 8-6-2010 at 11:59 pm

34. #1-I was home schooled since 6th grade but after begging my parents to let me go to school, ANY school with other kids, they sent me to the local private school. My birthday falls at the end of September so school had only been in session for about 3 or 4 weeks when, on my birthday, I walk into school and there is a big banner in the main hallway saying “Happy 15th Birthday! We Love You!” signed by my parents and they had decorated my locker too.
    One of my classmates offered to take it down, because he could see how embarrassed I was.

    #2- I did “friend” my best friend from my teenage years on Facebook and she sent me a message asking how I was and said she was hoping to hear from me. Well, I sent her a message letting her know what I’ve been up to these past years and inquired about her life, but she still has not answered back. She has not “unfriended” me, but just hasn’t written to me at all.

    #3- If I had $1 Billion to donate I would start a no-kill animal shelter, give to the World Health Organization, start a program to provide student focused education in the United States and third world countries, fund research for AIDS, fund family farms and promote local food shopping, and assist immigrants in becoming citizens of the US through classes on seeking employment, finding a place to live and their rights in this country.

    posted by AsherKat on 8-7-2010 at 12:43 am

35. 1) Plenty of stories. Way too many as a matter of fact. The worst comes courtesy of my step father. He and my mother were very generously helping me set up an account at Fleet Bank when I was a teenager. He was asking the clerk all kinds of questions about the chain of banks like if they were associated with the Fleet Mortgage Company and some other places. I was pretty convinced I would never speak to him again after he asked the poor clerk if they were associated with the Fleet’s enema company.

    2) I really haven’t looked for anyone.

    3) ASPCA

    posted by sarah on 8-7-2010 at 12:44 am

36. 1. My Dad insists on calling me by my childhood nickname, which includes a reference to flatulence because it rhymes with my name. He yelled this out at both my high school and college graduation ceremonies.

    This may be why I moved to another continent.

    My Mom has not ever hesitated to storm back to a cash register and scream about the cashierrobbing her blind if the person made an error in her change. She really takes it personally. Not fun and horribly embarrassing when the cashier is somebody you know from school.

    2. Old friendship? I got nothing.

    3. I’d allocate the money to medical charities, setting up hospitals etc.

    posted by JBlow on 8-7-2010 at 5:01 am

37. My parents were teachers in my high school. My mom was diagnosed with TMJ and was given a retainer with the gross pink plastic top that fits in the roof of your mouth. She wore it all the time. One day I was standing in the lunch line and my mom had lunch duty. A kid was doing something disruptive and she started to yell but the retainer interfered with her pronunciation. She dramatically spit it out in her hand and started yelling at the kid while pointing the retainer at him. I wanted….to….die……

    posted by Karl on 8-7-2010 at 7:22 am

38. 1. My mom worked at the local hamburger hangout when I was in high school. I found out that she used to tell all the guys who came in that they should ask me out. She even gave some of them our phone number.

    2. Nobody from that time period!

    3. A Grant program for teachers who desperately want to teach with technology, but work in schools which block such attempts.

    posted by linda on 8-7-2010 at 9:44 am

39. 1-When I was a kid and we’de go to restaurants, my mom would make me take of my glasses and she would proceed to spit on the glass wash them. Wrong in so many ways.

    3-I would be super anal-retentive about it, insisting on spending a lot of time researching organisations, what they do, how effective they are ect ect… I presently have some fondness for S.O.S. Children’s Villages. look into things that will help in a sustainable way. So many worthy causes.

    posted by Elaine on 8-7-2010 at 2:56 pm

40. 1) On my 16th birthday, my mother hired a singing telegram to give me balloons in the middle of a restaurant. Said telegram individual was dressed like a cheap stripper. I still cannot stand having any notice of my birthday in restaurants.

    2) My ex-fiancee and I lost touch about seven years ago, when I was living in Indiana and she was in Illinois. About a year ago, she found me living in Austin, TX — and she had moved to Dallas. We talk regularly, occasionally have lunch, and have become good friends again.

    3) I would give $900 million away, $500K at a time, to grass-roots, small, local charities. I would use the other $100 million to set up a free legal activism organization to defend religious freedom in the US. (Here’s a sobering thought; you can still have your children taken away by a child protection organization for being Neo-Pagan.)

    posted by Duke E on 8-7-2010 at 4:19 pm

41. 1. Wedding party. Billy Idol. Great-Grandma. ‘Nuff said.

    I’m the one embarassing my parents most of the time, though. In a crowded restaurant, I asked my dad what time it was, and he said 8:30, and I said “Crap, we’re missing Doctor Who!” really loudly.
    My mom also likes to fart on band trips.

    posted by Bri-Bri on 8-7-2010 at 7:56 pm

42. @Lynnie

    I am sorry that happened to you, too. Haha.

    posted by Megan on 8-7-2010 at 11:31 pm

43. My parents were incredibly overprotective of my sister and me while we were growing up. One summer they decided that they didn’t feel comfortable leaving us home alone during the day (even though I was a 13 year old who was certified in CPR and consistently babysat for other families). So they enrolled my 7 year old sister in a daycare program, and when she complained about it, they enrolled me too. However, as the head of the daycare informed my parents, there was not an age group old enough for me, as they typically didn’t get kids over the ages of 9 or 10. So for the entire summer I had to sit in a classroom designed for third graders-complete with snack time, arts and crafts, and every single Land Before Time ever made. I was mortified, and I will still lie about that summer to this day.

    posted by Jordan on 8-8-2010 at 2:47 am

44. 2. I JUST did a blog post on this very subject. I re-connected with practically ALL my childhood friends and classmates.

    I won’t be going to my 30th reunion this year because I’m afraid the politeness and LACK of cliques on FB will be gone. I enjoy how everybody comments on everybody’s pictures and I love how the different groups are all friends with each other. I’m afraid of losing that feeling by actually being in the same room with these people.

    Also, they’ve been having recent parties and picnics so I get to see the pictures. Sometimes that’s enough.

    I got to know someone who is now a part of my daily life. We’ve never met but we are on the phone daily and live 3000 apart. Our friendship began in a chatroom and we took our chat private on FB. Now we run a blog together.

    posted by Dani on 8-8-2010 at 3:23 am

45. Mine is depressing. My mother is an embarrassment to me because she hasn’t worked since 1986 when she decided no one appreciated her working so she stopped. Since then she has done nothing but diet, talk about dieting and everything she eats. At one point, she would describe every meal she had had for the last 3 days until I told her it was borish. The last straw came when she said she admired my ex-husbands sister for potentially being anorexic because “at least she found a way that worked for her to keep the weight off”.

    Also, she now draws Social Security because of her age. She believes she is entitled to it because she is an American. She bad mouths those people who don’t work and mooch off the government and states that they don’t deserve anything if they don’t work (this is a thinly veiled reference to anyone who is not white and not a baby boomer). The icing on the cake is that she has had a heart condition that was finally treated, how, you may ask: She went to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota (she lives in Florida) so she could have the best care available because she deserves to have only the best. Btw, even though she has one daughter that pays through the nose for health care and actually has a bit of ill health and would benefit from health care reform she doesn’t believe everyone should be entitled to receive “free” health care benefits. The irony there, of course, is that she didn’t pay for her health care, not after 1986 anyway.

    My father, on the other hand, works very, very hard.

    I don’t know what you think but I find my mother’s “silver platter” mentality very embarrassing, to say the least. As a matter of fact, I cannot begin to understand her thinking.

    posted by elynorah on 8-8-2010 at 5:35 am

46. 1. Similar to Elymorah’s story mine strays to the depressing side. As a child, my ears stuck out. A trait I had inherited from my dad. Well, as he was teased because of it, he and my mom decided to sew down my ears at age 12. I, myself had never been teased and begged them not to do it. I liked my ears. Anyway, against my wishes, I had the elective surgery resulting in me having to go to school and sporting events with bandages covering half my head. Where I would have to explain to my peers that my parents thought my ears were ugly and had them sewed down. Embarrassing only begins to explain the mortification that comes from having to explain that your own parents thought you needed plastic surgery at the age of 12.
    2. None
    3. Eradicating diseases worldwide that have been virtually eliminated in the United States (polio, whooping cough, measles etc.) The world was able to eradicate smallpox. We should be able to get rid of these diseases also.

    posted by Shannon on 8-8-2010 at 6:15 pm

47. 1. Well, this one isn’t cute or funny since my parents drank when I was growing up. My mother, in particular, could go from Jeckyl to Hyde at a moment’s notice. I was a teen, and had recently made a really good friend and we would talk on the phone for hours on end. The one time, my drunken Mom picks up the extension on the upstairs phone and, for no reason whatsoever, bellows, “Get off the g.d. (no, she didnt abbreviate it like I did) phone!!” I complied, mostly because I think I was too mortified to try and continue our conversation like nothing happened. Incidentally, my friend and I are still great friends almost 25 years later.

    2. I had an East German pen pal named Roy and he found me on FB back in March. After the Berlin Wall fell, he moved to northern England and since I was in London for vacation, I took the 2 hour train ride to meet him face to face! He still has my letters, too!

    3. Not sure…would like to do something for the betterment of the world, in general, and something that would have long-term positive consequences. Perhaps something environmental.

    posted by Marty on 8-8-2010 at 9:06 pm

48. 1. I’m sure I have many stories but I’ve blocked them all out!
    2. I’ve reconnected with a few foster brothers & sisters.
    3. Easy one – I would do this if I won the lottery as well. Give it all to St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital because they are simply amazing for what they do!

    posted by Christine on 8-9-2010 at 4:43 am

49. 1. Although my parents are highly embarrassing, thankfully neither of them are as bad as my uncle. One day my cousins and I were with him at the grocery store, where he proceeded to open one of the freezer doors and fart into it. To make matters worse, he started hysterically laughing when some poor woman came by, opened the freezer and was assaulted by the horrible smell. He also took me, my sister and 4 of my cousins to see Titanic in theaters, where he snored very loudly for the entire 3 hours of the movie. Sigh.

    posted by Laura on 8-10-2010 at 11:41 am

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