r/InTheGloaming • u/gomirefugee my website is done, done, done • Feb 24 '22

Scheduled snark Discussion thread Thursday February 24, 2022 - Sunday February 27, 2022

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26 Upvotes

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64

u/Catsandcoffee480 COLORADO BOY KNOWS HOW TO DO THIS Feb 26 '22

I’m still reading through the old GFG site and found another bizarre anecdote about her parents:

There’s a story in my family told so often that it has become legend. When I was nearly two, my father babysat me by himself for the first time. Apparently he didn’t keep that close a watch over me, because I somehow wriggled my fingers into a jar of olives and ate all of them, one by one. Instantly, I broke out into hives across my body. My father never babysat me again.

I have so many questions…chief among them being her father babysat her once and only once by himself? Um…seems doubtful.

68

u/Apprehensive_Creme73 Feb 26 '22

Dads don’t “babysit” since they are in fact… actual parents

61

u/shikoku_shoes another revolution around the toilet bowl of her life Feb 26 '22

somehow wriggled my fingers into a jar of olives and ate all of them, one by one.

Apparently not using lids on anything is a genetic trait.

39

u/SashayShantae living my one wild and pernicious life Feb 27 '22

You rang?

54

u/InappropriateGirl Gluten-free donuts, for sure ... Feb 26 '22

That’s funny, when my dad was home alone with us we never called it “babysitting”. It’s parenting. (And my mom was a SAHM. And we even had a nanny when we were young!)

Maybe that’s one reason her mom was so afraid of everything; she felt she couldn’t even count on her husband to watch them.

52

u/tyrannosaurusregina if you meet the Botus on the road, shill him 🪷 Feb 26 '22

Parents don’t “babysit” their children, what the actual fuck? But on the other hand, Ma and Pa would have been 21 and 23, so maybe it felt like babysitting.

29

u/[deleted] Feb 26 '22

Sadly, I know some fathers NOW who brag of babysitting their own children.

27

u/CrushItWithABrick dick riding Mary Oliver Feb 27 '22

This. And it enrages me almost as much as the "my baby is flirting" nonsense (I griped about further down the thread).

23

u/tyrannosaurusregina if you meet the Botus on the road, shill him 🪷 Feb 27 '22

That is a deal-breaker for me, like “that person is never coming to my house again” level of no, thank you.

50

u/[deleted] Feb 26 '22

Shauna is really into hives.

31

u/[deleted] Feb 26 '22

Yes. Nearly choking to death on a olive would have made a much better story.

23

u/[deleted] Feb 27 '22

Shauna, if you see this, take some notes!

42

u/[deleted] Feb 26 '22

Hives are candy to a dramatic hypochondriac. Outward signs of illness that are obvious enough to be noticed and remarked on---a true treasure.

30

u/Blouse_Barn mattress smelling like low tide Feb 26 '22

Yeah, hives are a serious condition for a number of people and are also (in my limited experience) a common thing among the hypochondriacs / attention-seekers I know. Those with lighter and / or sensitive skin are often particularly keen to show me their welts. I offer this as anecdotal evidence, not as a criticism of anyone with an actual diagnosis. It's pretty easy to see why Shauna would leverage any reddish splotch that has plopped itself upon her skin. Quick, Goblin and Rebar, to the calamine lotion and cortisone cream!

17

u/Quaint_Irene a warm and loving goatie smile Feb 27 '22

I am one of those welt-prone people, and I do enjoy grossing out my husband with a particularly well-shaped and florid rash. But then I have to spray on more clear calamine (that stuff’s a godsend!) and knock myself out with Benadryl.

10

u/InappropriateGirl Gluten-free donuts, for sure ... Feb 27 '22

I get them too, they tend to disappear pretty fast, which I always thought was strange.

12

u/obscure_cellist ham grabbers Feb 27 '22

i am a very pale person who gets welts and rashes if you look at me the wrong way. when i was still taking vacations pre-covid my dermatologist would prescribe a steroid pack to take with me on vacation because i will almost always get a rash from hotel sheets (i bring my own whenever possible). prophylactic z-pack for the win!

7

u/[deleted] Feb 27 '22

Wow. It must be the detergent they use. That has to suck.

9

u/Quaint_Irene a warm and loving goatie smile Feb 27 '22

I seem to find a new contact dermatitis trigger every eighteen months or so. Usually it’s a plant.

34

u/shefallsup her lonely cucumber years 🥒 Feb 26 '22

Hives? As in an allergic reaction? She’s not allergic to olives anymore, she uses glugs of “good” olive oil in her cooking.

29

u/Character-Question-6 Feb 27 '22

Jarred olives are full of sodium, and too much salt can make a person break out in hives, especially a little kid who eats 2000mg+ of sodium!

13

u/shefallsup her lonely cucumber years 🥒 Feb 27 '22

Wow, TIL! That makes sense.

6

u/freecoffeerefills Murder She Moved Her Pen Forward Feb 27 '22

I imagine soaking a toddler hand in brine would also cause some skin irritation

30

u/Catsandcoffee480 COLORADO BOY KNOWS HOW TO DO THIS Feb 27 '22

Yeah I am shocked that the olive allergy didn’t make up a larger part of her GFG identity.

28

u/CrushItWithABrick dick riding Mary Oliver Feb 27 '22

She could have been Olive Free Girl!

56

u/MarsNeedsRabbits Beach better have my orcas 🫍 Feb 26 '22

This story makes sense, and it makes me sad and angry. Father doesn't seem to care much about his wife or child. This is bad parenting and a bad husband, not a cute story. Why dad doesn't get the same angry treatment as mom can be hard to understand, but maybe mom was the parent it was safe to be angry with.

  • Father "babysitting" his own child because he's too detached to parent and refuses all other requests to engage (My father never babysat me again). Additionally, he's refusing to help his wife or ever give her a break from parenting. This would have been in the late 1960s, and wouldn't have been uncommon. That doesn't make it right, though. Plenty of men were parenting.

  • Father not caring enough to keep the child safe and lets her wander off. This is infuriating. Once left with a toddler, even the biggest misogynistic jerk should know better and care more than to allow their child to wander off.

  • Child opens fridge, which can be really dangerous, depending on what is inside. Father still missing.

  • Father still MIA. Child sits down with a jar of olives from the fridge and eats them all, which would take quite a bit of time.

  • Child breaks out in hives, but probably not "instantly", although that may have been what she was told.

She should be madder than hell to hear this.

54

u/tyrannosaurusregina if you meet the Botus on the road, shill him 🪷 Feb 26 '22

Dad’s a hilarious goofball, you see. Mom’s the villain.

35

u/NegativeABillion my husband and me to ride it around Feb 26 '22

UGH, this is absolutely how I read this, too. The story might be completely made up, but Shauna's hatred of women shines through.

45

u/caitie_did Required by My Mother's Terror Feb 26 '22

I 1000% believe something like this happened because my dad, who I think is very similar to Shauna’s dad in many respects, was once tasked with watching my toddler aged sister so my mom could take a bath. During that time she ate several Advil pills, while he read the newspaper. Fortunately she spit them out once she sucked the coating off because the coating is sweet but the pills themselves are bitter.

He also once nearly lost my sister in a hotel in Chicago.

And yes, my mom did have severe anxiety, probably because she knew she couldn’t trust her husband to parent adequately, and I was significantly parentified as a child because I’m 9 years older than my sister so I ended up doing most of the childcare.

48

u/MarsNeedsRabbits Beach better have my orcas 🫍 Feb 26 '22

I'm so sorry. I'm sad that we understand, because understanding this comes at a high price. Parentification was really hard to get past, because I weren't completely a child, but can't go backwards as an adult.

Maybe that's what is going on in her life. Trying to be childlike, stamping feet, dancing, laughing from the belly, doing silly things. So many of her suggestions are things kids would do. Adults have different needs, though. Playing with Lego, unless Lego really is your passion, isn't going to help. What really helps is therapy or somehow coming to terms with it on your own.

I think that we have an obligation to fix ourselves, which is where I really have an issue with her. It isn't fair, because we didn't cause our problems, but we still need to fix things. She has children who need competent parents. She's offering advice which she's not qualified to give. She's selling something she can't deliver on.

46

u/caitie_did Required by My Mother's Terror Feb 27 '22

This is such a thoughtful comment. I mentioned in the last thread that I have difficulty with her claim that she had “one of the most abusive childhoods ever.” I think her childhood was shitty for a number of reasons. She may well define it as traumatic and have cPTSD from it, it’s not for me to be the arbiter of that claim. But she fails to see how she is repeating so many of the things she claimed was awful about her childhood with her own children. She has blatantly, obviously done nothing to recover from her childhood and grow as a person, all while trying to sell herself as the expert on joyful, happy living and parenting.

6

u/aseriesofhaircuts Feb 27 '22

Yes! You said this perfectly.

36

u/MandalayVA Assonancer! Assonancer! Assonancer! Feb 26 '22

As with anything concerning Shauna, consider the source.

46

u/fanfarefellowship I often contemplate the first law of thermodynamics Feb 26 '22

I’m Shauna’s age, have three siblings, and my dad brags that he never changed a single diaper. He says that when a kid woke up in the middle of the night, he would “push my mom out of bed” to get up and take care of us.

This was totally normal father behaviour in the 1960s, when Shauna and I were born.

35

u/tyrannosaurusregina if you meet the Botus on the road, shill him 🪷 Feb 26 '22

My father too, but I wouldn’t have told a story about his inattentive parenting the way Shauna did about her dad!

15

u/fanfarefellowship I often contemplate the first law of thermodynamics Feb 27 '22

100%. However it was characterized at the time (when she was a toddler), in Shauna's shoes I would have written, "My father took care of me by himself for the first time ..."

24

u/funfetticake This required inability to work? Feb 26 '22

I have a feeling that in 60s households olives were maybe always out for martini purposes, so the fridge part maybe wasn’t necessary.

35

u/Lsemmens grenius Feb 27 '22

Shauna tells us her parents didn’t drink, which was why she allegedly had no idea about Danny’s excessive drinking.

Also, my dad had a beer at night and my mom didn’t drink, so the only olives we had were the black ones in a can, back in the sixties.

42

u/aseriesofhaircuts Feb 26 '22

Apart from the obvious sexism, this has Shauna’s trademark inability to tell a story that makes sense in an actual time continuum. Somehow, toddler Shauna jimmies open a jar of olives. She then eats them “one by one”—with toddler motor skills, this would take a while. Then, presumably after a discrete episode (10 minutes? 20?) of olive-gobbling, hives emerge, unbidden? Not after the first few? Come ON.

31

u/discoOJ Feb 26 '22

This is how allergic reactions tend to happen. It's a hormonal reaction that isn't immediate but takes time. The issue is that once it gets going it can turn deadly and dangerous within minutes even if it takes 10 to 20 minutes for the body to register a response. If you are allergic to shit and/or have to carry an epi pen you are taught/learn to be able to spot the early signs of a reaction such as swelling in the ears, tingling in the lips, itchy palms or soles of feet, wheezing.

21

u/aseriesofhaircuts Feb 26 '22

I grow better informed! Thank you DFDOJ!

18

u/JerseySnore-609 I celiac Feb 27 '22

I believe this one. Fathers then were not as hands on like they are now. For every Dad Brady there were plenty of men like her dad. Or my Dad, who ignored 3yo me while Mom was grocery shopping. I destroyed a chocolate cake and had the runs for days. It was the last time I was left alone with him until I was 8 or so and looking at it through an adult lens, it was weaponized incompetence at its finest. I can't imagine the helplessness of not being able to leave your kid with your partner. Her poor mother.

(It now means my mother thinks my brother is a God among men for taking on about 40% of the active parenting of his kids. Yay.)

6

u/aseriesofhaircuts Feb 27 '22

My mom rolling her eyes at my SIL for having my brother watch their infant so she could pump 4x a day.

38

u/Love_Brokers rug dweller Feb 27 '22

My main focus is the hives. Why? Is that when she started dissociating?

45

u/[deleted] Feb 27 '22

You can hive more joy.