When I was taking care of my mother in her final days, my nephew (my brother's son) was staying over for a few weeks. My sister paid him money to spy on me because she was convinced I was trying to steal her inheritance. So the kid would listen in on every phone and personal convo and make a general nuisance of himself. It also ruined my relationship with him. We had been very close. She also broke into our parents' filing cabinet to steal their important papers (will, house deed, etc.). Fortunately, my mother had an idea this would happen and had already told me to take all that stuff.

During my mother's illness, my sister would call me and scream and curse at me for random things, like when I refused to cancel my moving plans to hang out with Dad after she had already agreed to watch him, or because mom's abscess smelled. (Turns out, death stinks.) She was perfectly nice to my husband, and it got so bad that he had to be the intermediary, especially after she assaulted me next to my mother's death bed, beat my head against a wall and tried to drag me down the stairs.

My brother threatened to kill my husband, broke a bunch of my parents' knickknacks in a fit of rage, racked up thousands of dollars in charges on the credit card he stole from my father, and stole most of my father's jewelry and whatever old photos and recipes he could cram into his suitcase.

Posted by: MonicaP at September 1, 2010 4:04 PM

Holy crap, Monica! I thought my sister was bad. Well, she is, but a little differently. When my mother died, this sister bugged my other, older sister about whether she'd paid our step-dad back for money he'd given for flowers. This was at the church, before the funeral service.

My older sister had to control her urge to deck her.

I had known for years that the youngest one had "issues" but everybody thought I was just jealous because she had replaced me as the baby of the family, and on the surface she was the perfect one.

After I moved to a new state, it was perversely gratifying to hear, over the years, how she managed to show her true personality to everyone in the family. Much crow was eaten, but not by me!

Posted by: Pricklypear at September 1, 2010 9:58 PM

My Mom died after a long fight with cancer, through which I'd taken care of her, when I was 20. The day she died my 35 year old brother broke the news to me that I was adopted, and didn't really count as family.

I looked at him and said, "Thank God I'm not really related to you." One of my proudest thinking-on-my-feet moments.

Posted by: Kimberly at September 2, 2010 9:04 PM

My MIL called us on a sunny Sunday and suggested a barbeque. Oh yeah, and it was going to be at our house. And we were supposed to make most of the food, she would bring a side dish. And she was going to bring three people with her. She would be at our house in three hours.

Gritting my teeth, I agreed. I went to the store to get enough food to feed everyone and rushed home to get everything prepared. Then we waited. The appointed hour had long since passed, and my stepson was hungry. We sat down and ate, as I could not see starving an 11 yr old because his grandmother could not apparently read a clock.

She showed up 2.5 hours late with a bowl of corn. She whined for almost an hour about the fact that we had already eaten, implying how rude we were not to wait for the rest of our guests. BTW, she has a cell phone that she didn't feel the need to use or answer during our wait.

Oh yeah, and when she came over for Thanksgiving dinner, she was there for all of 10 minutes before telling me that I'd made everything wrong. In other words, not the way she makes thing. I could have kissed my brother-in-law when we sat down to eat and he told his mom that she'd better take notes, because everything was way better than anything she's ever made. I smiled politely, but did a happy dance in my head...

Posted by: Renee at September 3, 2010 2:28 PM

Renee, you have the best brother-in-law ever!

Posted by: Ingrid at September 3, 2010 6:35 PM

A potential category for exploring rudeness is privacy.

I couldn't actually find the "miscellaneous" category but these ones are family related. As in , the person that posts private information about their family members on facebook (while also not implementing privacy features). Or posts unflattering pix. Or tags a photo in such a way that name and hometown are revealed to all.

Or how about the family member that doesn't respect closed doors and just walks right into a private area without being invited? Or peers into windows of cars to see what is left on the seats/floors? My mom does these. She does not live with us but when she comes to visit she snoops everywhere.
Grrr.

Posted by: LauraGr at September 3, 2010 9:42 PM

At every family function, my husband's mother & grandmother take gleeful joy in asking us when we will have kids. His mother already has grandchildren from his sisters, so I don't understand the further need to push the issue with us.

Once, his grandmother went so far as to put her hand on my belly and tell me that I wasn't a real woman until I experienced "what it felt like to have life grow inside me."

Posted by: Jen Wading at September 4, 2010 10:41 AM

I was rude to myself. It's relevant to the story to say I'm Jewish.

I went to California on vacation. Did clothes shopping on Hollywood Blvd. Saw a nice black shirt with black and white buttons on the rack and bought it.

A few months later my aunt had a family reunion party. I wore the shirt. Sitting down on the couch I took a closer look at the buttons. The buttons were white with a black design. I took a closer look at the design. It was a big +. It looked a lot like the German Iron Cross. There was a design around it. I looked closer. They were letters. "Third Reich".

My heart skipped. I went to my family reunion wearing a Nazi shirt.

Posted by: hadsil at September 4, 2010 7:59 PM

Oh wow, just thought of a good one.

When my husband died, his family came from out of state for the funeral. His two sisters walked in the door of my apartment and proceeded to go through my cupboards, closets, etc. without permission, as if they lived there and had every right to do so. I literally had to lock up my wedding pictures and our personal belongings in my desk so they could not take them (and I was right to do so, because they had the nerve to ask my mother why I had locked my desk while I was at the funeral home, PLANNING THE FUNERAL.

I could go on and on about the rudeness of these people, but let's just say I'm glad they're 1200 miles away and I haven't talked to any of them in 10 or 12 years.

Posted by: Ann at September 4, 2010 8:17 PM

I am a teacher who worked for several years in the "underprivileged' and very diverse school in a mostly upper-middle class suburban school district. The staff taught extra classes, did community work, and provided every resource we could for the struggling families. We served many recent immigrants from all over the world as well as a group of formerly inner-city families on state aid. We pulled together and gave it our all, trying to keep up academically with the rest of the district. My StepMIL, whose children attended the school, would send in the most horrible rants on every parent-response form, about the principal, the administration, the teachers, and how it had become the "garbage pit" of the district. It was beyond humiliating.

When she came to see our new house after we moved, she sat on my couch and told me that I was insane for not supporting unrestricted abortion because I was a teacher. She said if I was smart I didn't want to have any of "those crack babies and wetbacks" in my classroom, and that they should have never been allowed to live.

Posted by: kbaann at September 9, 2010 2:06 AM

I've got two short ones for ya:

1)My uncle spending all of Thanksgiving dinner telling me I'm going to have nothing but miscarriages if and when I try to get pregnant because I'm a vegetarian.

2)My sister-in-law deciding that the best time to tell me she's been holding a grudge against me for five years was in the middle of a bar at my sister's bachelorette party. Even though I was the maid of honor and planned the whole thing, she literally pulled me away from my sister's side and proceeded to rant at me for 45 minutes. Oh, and the grudge was because I didn't "reach out to her" when her and my brother were having marital problems - even though I was living abroad at the time and neither she nor my brother told me about said problems. (I had to find out several months later from my sister.)

Posted by: Rozzy at September 15, 2010 9:30 PM

Recently my Nephew got married. I was taking pictures at the reception and followed a bunch of the younger adults out to watch them "decorate" my nephew's car. His car used to be mine and I had given it to him.

I went back inside the church and started showing my family the pictures of the car. My Dad said "Are you sad that your car is getting married before you?"

Posted by: Joyce T at October 13, 2010 11:07 PM

What do you do when your mom blocks you on facebook for the second time?
A dear friend has pointed out this web site.
Thank you for letting me vent Amy.

Posted by: Kassondra Golden at October 23, 2010 3:32 AM

I'm so sorry to hear about that, Kassondra. Can you post more detail -- why she's doing this, or why you think she might be doing this?

Posted by: Amy Alkon at October 23, 2010 6:01 AM

Well, I'm very new to this...pc's, posting.
My mother is a cruel, evil, manipulative woman.
That's why she has blocked me on fb.
I don't feel safe there. She is connected to all my family and friends, only 14 people on fb.
Can she still see my posts through other family
members? I don't have any other way to keep in touch with them easily. I live on an island.
How do I make new friends on fb with people I don't know?
Thank you for your advice and attention.

Posted by: Kassondra at October 24, 2010 1:29 AM

You need to look at your privacy settings and set them on the highest level. I'm so sorry about your mother. Family are people who act like family, not simply blood relatives. I suggest trying to create family out of unrelated people in your life (over time).

Posted by: Amy Alkon at October 24, 2010 4:15 PM

My MIL has a long history of being extremely rude and cruel, but recently she outdid herself. I am 30, and I have two brothers who are both almost a decade younger than I am. Our dad was already dead when our mom (the nicest person ever-for real) was placed in hospice and given a few months to live. My MIL is super possessive of the grandkids, and when she got the news she made the exited and happy statement: "I guess I'm just going to be the last grandma standing!" A couple of days after my mom actually passed away, my MIL called my husband and told him that I needed to call her to discuss our relationship. And then she said that she knew I probably wouldn't be willing to do that, and then said: "Well good for her. Let her get colon cancer then!" in a very mean voice. Guess what just killed my mom a few days before and left her on her deathbed weighing about 70 pounds. Yes, colon cancer.

Posted by: Emily Oriel at March 11, 2011 9:19 PM