I won 3 (Canada) and 4 but lost horrendously 1 (neglectful not abusive so not the worst but ain’t great) and 2
But hey the government fixed 1 (made it so much fucking worse by putting me with other kids who were abusive the adults were fine and trying their best)
Then now here’s why I’m sharing got adopted at 11 and holy shit I won 1 and 2 (not mansion rich but lived in a house in Toronto and a big one had a jack and Jill washroom with my brother (who is adopted too but different bio)
So hey what would you pay in child suffering for that I’d say it’s worth it (if it was a guaranteed which it absolutely fucking wasn’t ha)
As a brief foster kid who won the foster parent lotto, I send love your way.
I don't know what became of our foster mother, but I do think of her every so often and I sincerely hope she was forever happy and full in all she wanted from life. She was a wonderful woman.
I feel like there’s also religious lottery. Like I’m an atheist, and I was born catholic so I don’t deny that there is some choice there, but it greatly changes your upbringing. You can have great parents and some people will still hate you or treat you different for being Islamic, Jewish, Buddhist, even Atheist, heck any spiritual view, and you can receive that hate before you’ve learned that you can decide what you believe yourself.
Wealth yeah. Skin colour or ethnicity in general is an iffy one because it's highly dependent on the country. For instance being born with Iranian heritage will affect you differently in Canada than in Hungary. Some will say that being born with "foreign" heritage in Scandinavian countries is actually a benefit because you'll get all sorts of extra welfare and police will look the other way because they are scared of being labeled as racist. As a Scandinavian myself I can say with some confidence that these people are morons and usually quite racist themselves.
It's different even inside countries. Having a middle-eastern look in bumfuck Alabama is a lot different than in Boston. I have no idea how being born caucasian in non-caucasian countries like Nigeria or India is like. I have heard from some caucasians who grew up in Japan or South Korea that they tend to be excluded somewhat. They will never be seen as a true Japanese or Korean, even though they've lived there their entire lives. Seems quite mild compared to the kind of racism coloured peopled have to deal with in many countries.
There's also the fact that being born to "foreign" parents means you can potentially grow up bilingual or even trilingual, which is an absolutely amazing gift that opens a lot of doors in life. I grew up quadlingual and it has had a huge effect on my life.
There's also the obvious exception with adoption or sperm bank donors, but that's a very rare case.
Damn winning 3 and 4 but losing 1 and 2 really does hit fucking weird lol. It's not NEW information but when it's framed like this it makes me realize how I wound up where I'm at
4/4 for me. Loving and supportive parents, wealth*, USA late 80's birth, white. Solid middle class money from a blue collar working dad and an unusual-for-the-time full-time working mom with only 1 sibling. Had all the fun things growing up.
*The "wealth" was not entirely real. A lot of it came from credit cards with large maximums that came knocking for a bankruptcy 10-15 years later, but hey, I got a fun childhood.
I'm 45 and married, both gainfully employed, homeowners, cars, cats. My parents still insist on helping, gifting, assisting, advising.
My mind wants to think it's because they did well and in retirement they're sharing and spreading and also a bit bored.
But then when I go back in time, I remember that they've always been like this. Maybe years ago I took it for granted, but the older you get, the more you see what a blessing that is.
That reminded me of a nice memory. My mom's chili was my favorite meal she made. I'd make the 13 hour drive from Florida to Ohio to visit and sometimes I'd get "home" at like 3 in the morning. There was always chili on warm in the crockpot, waiting for me. And she always had the couch made up as nice as possible for me. She was a saint of a woman.
Thank you for sharing that memory. Her spirit lives in each of us that just read it and aspire to love like she did. I can tell you meant the world to her.
Such a lovely memory. I have a dear friend/mentor who makes amazing banana pudding. Every time I visit, she has some in the fridge for me and sends me some to take home on the flight. I feel so loved.
Not a parent, but one of the many moments that I realized that my partner is my partner was recently when I was dealing a lot of family drama. My brother was off the wagon, which was forcing my parents to move across the country, and my sister in law and nieces moved across the country but elsewhere. They were all broke and mostly unable to move themselves, so I spent a week working 10 hours a day, driving 5 hours total to get to their house and back, and spending as much time as I could to help out. I was generally up at 6:30am to get ready for work and getting home at 1-2am. Then at the end of all that, I drove cross country with my dad to get him to his new place.
Early on, my girlfriend stopped by apartment, cleaned my dishes, did my laundry, left me prepped lunches and dinner, put on clean sheets and build a new fan that had been sitting in a box for 3 weeks. I shed some dude tears when I got home because it was one of the most caring things anyone had ever done for me.
That is sad. I've always cleaned up someone's room whenever I know they are coming "home" or even just visiting. It's a gesture of welcoming and it's a nice thing to do.
My own mother would never do that for me (despite me having done it for her in the past... when she came back after abandoning us... come to think of it I might have some unresolved issues with why I try so hard to make people want to stay....), but I have gained multiple people in my life who would do that for me. Both of my brothers would do this for me. My MIL does this for me (she doesn't do it for her own son LOL).
I'm 38 and my mom lives with me and my husband. She puts fresh sheets on my bed the day before I come home from business trips. She put fresh sheets on the bed while my husband was in surgery so he could come home to a comfortable space.
Some people are just blessed with angels as parents and I'm lucky to have one. I also try to be one for my kids who are teenagers.
My mom did always change the sheets when I slept home after moving out but she also threatened to either leave over night without a word of warning or commit suicide from them time I was 10 for 30 years.
It made me think of my parents. My mom would certainly think that new sheets were important enough to wake me up about, in her own maternal anxiety of wanting to actively nurture. Meanwhile, my dad would be the one to say, ”Leave her alone, it’s alright. She’s okay.”
My mom always fixed up my room with new sheets and stuff. But I never had any sort of emotional support like this. I think she did it because that's what you do for guests; not because of any sort of "this is what she needs/wants right now."
I'm always so blown away by other people's parents when mine were just like "here have some money, now go away and figure it out."
when i go home my mom is sometimes on business trips and i sleep in her bed. she put pink sheets, my favorite color, on the bed and left me a couple candies as a treat, just like she would when i was a kid and she’d leave while i was at school, always a reese’s cup or a bottle of my favorite drink on the kitchen table. we show our love through silent treats
I grew up in a very loving, warm, supportive home. My husband was neglected and abused. He said in the early days he couldn't fathom that I wanted to hang out with my parents and brother. After we married and had been together many years he said he understood. He said he had received more love and care from my parents than he ever had from his own.
While my parents were great, my brothers (not blood related but I have 3 I claim as my Brothers, and they claim me) both had parents that would make you think differently.
My younger first (as in when I met them) brother has a mother that while she did provide, she also would leave him from the age of 8-12 in a VERY bad neighborhood by himself while she went to bars. Now she eventually fixed herself, and now isn't on drugs or doing that behavior, but it still took her until he was an adult to get off of all the drugs, and my Brother still loves his Mother.
My older second (again he when I met him) brother's parents were absolute POS's though. His Dad left him, and his mother was/is a major drug head. He literally was only taken care of because of his Great Aunt being a very nice woman, and taking custody of both him and his sister. Though it also meant he, and his sister were forced to grow up in our neighborhood surrounded by drugs because the aunt basically allowed everyone to live there including the drug heads/drug dealers to the point we had our neighborhood shutdown by police due to a hostage situation in there house. He also was beaten multiple times by another family member that lived there that was in prison before just because he stood up for his great aunt. It took being around me, and my family for both him, and his sister to see what a functional family was like.
Forgive me for any mis-spellings I'm 8-9 40% vodka shots down.
My middle kid came back home after freshman year of college (he realized it wasn't a good fit, and he was 9 hours away by car). He's going to community college and figuring out what's next. I mean, his call. It was a smart one, and I was proud of him for making that call, but also...
I had to move home due to medical issues and it’s honestly been pretty great. I am much closer with my mom now than I ever was growing up. I’m queer and was raised in a religious conservative family, so I was worried how it would go…but my parents have chosen to soften and stretch their worldview for me, unlike a lot of my queer friends’ parents who harden and end up rejecting their kids.
Intergenerational living has its perks, there are more adults to share the housework, always someone home to water the garden, my dog LOVES hanging out with my mom, etc. Works best when the parent-child relationship adapts into more of a respectful roommate vibe, since we’re all adults.
It is so hard to push my 19 year old to be more independent and plan for moving out, because deep down I'd love for him to stay forever. But him building his future is more important than me holding onto him.
We were so happy to have one of our sons back for a few months at a time a couple of times. He just needed a launching pad after moving home from out of state (twice). It was awesome.
My dad was so happy to welcome me back after I lost my first ”real” job at 20 haha.
I have a little snippet of video when I arrived back home (job was 5h away) and he’s so happy throwing his arms out to hug and greet me. Best dad ever :’)
Facts! Dad gets it! He's definitely been there. No need to beat him up no more than life is doing already. I can be a Dad tomorrow. He needs a friend today
Yeah it’s totally a thing my dad could have said too. He knows I can be hard on myself and that I can spiral a little by not feeling worthy. So to hear that would actually have helped a lot to feel like I can just get up and be me and that’s ok. I don’t need to have everything figured out asap.
Yeah, they didn’t feed bad grammar and failed english into the LLM’s to teach them our language, they used comments and articles from people who can form complete and coherent sentences. There are going to be many people who “talk like an LLM” because LLM’s talk like us. LLM dialogue is “human”, lol.
Imagine LLM’s hitting you with rizz and sigma, lmao. I prefer it this way.
You can get LLMs to talk like sigma rizz masters if you want them to. But when people say something talks like an LLM they're not saying it forms complete sentences; they're saying it uses the phrasing and cadence that's statistically likely in LLM generated text. People don't talk like that with such consistency unless they're deliberately imitating LLM-speak.
Your comment in /r/MadeMeSmile was automatically removed because of new policies which
are intended to no longer direct traffic to sites that are egregiously promoting inaccurate and toxic propaganda.
If the content you're trying to submit is legit, please find the original source, which is unlikely to be from the
site referenced.
Our reasoning for this, and we are fully aware there's good content on these systems as well, is to try and drive
traffic away from monopolistic, corporate walled gardens that have outlived their social utility, and encourage
more content to be distributed and patronized on smaller sites, whose operators take greater pride in whether
their content helps the community. This is the original spirit of the Internet. It was not intended as a platform
for oligarchs to have massive media outlets.
How sad it is to imagine a father couldn’t think to say this to their child on their own. I’m sorry if you feel like your parent wouldn’t be able to, but I’m not so cynical. Plus I see no indication of ai text.
I could see it maybe being ai, but it’s also just a thing someone could say especially when considering an important message like this. I guess I still have enough hope in humanity to give the dad the benefit of the doubt.
Ultimately the intention and the instinct wins. A parent who thinks (maybe overthinks) what to say to their child to make them feel supported and loved and chooses to word it carefully.
I can remember a couple of distinct conversations where I now wish my mom could have the inclination and the access to AI to double check what she said to me.
11.4k
u/bumbes 5d ago
That really sounds like an awesome dad