“My brother had a girlfriend in high school, his first-ever real girlfriend, and my mom did not like her. All three of us went to the same high school together and this girl glommed onto me as super sweet buddy-buddy BFFs when she got with my brother. But my mom didn’t trust the girl, she didn’t like the girl, and her dismay and apprehensions mounted the longer my brother knew her.
We’re only talking about a couple of weeks to a few months. But it culminated in my brother hanging out at her house to visit her for dinner one evening. And then declaring he wasn’t coming home because he was going to stay there for the night. Apparently, her parents were backing him up on this on the phone.
My mom wasn’t having it. She stuffed me in the car and peeled out of the driveway. It wasn’t just my brother being defiant, he’d done that before, something felt really off about this to her.
We got to the apartment complex where the family lived, and I helped her locate the apartment. I was in the car because I had been there before. I in no way wanted to be part of this situation whatsoever. Nonetheless, I went up to the door and knocked because we figured he will come out and talk to me.
He did come out, he talked, my mom talked, the girlfriend came out and started screaming. At this point, I had locked myself in the car and rolled up the windows because I didn’t want to be any part of this. I remember her parents standing on the balcony and yelling down at my mom and my brother below. We qualified for Jerry Springer at that point. It was all beyond ridiculous.
Eventually, my mom got my brother back in the car. She made me sit in the back seat so he could sit in the front seat and I remember arguing about the fact I should get to sit in the front seat because I wasn’t the one who had caused all the problems that night.
Well, she got him in the front seat and put me in the back, and gave him a reaming from six ways to Sunday all the way home. I don’t know specifics, I just remember her saying things like, ‘it doesn’t add up,’ and ‘there’s something wrong here,’ and ‘this just isn’t right.’ ‘Parents don’t co-sign their teenage daughter doing that and back the guy up in defiance to his parent when his parent said no.’ ‘There was something wrong with these people.’
There was something wrong with these people. 7-1/2 to 8 months later the girl gave birth to a baby. She was pregnant, she knew she was pregnant, and she wanted my brother to think he was the father (he and she had never had ‘done it,’ that was going to be ‘their night’). Her parents were abetting her in the ruse.
For a couple of years after that when my brother wanted to do something stupid all my mom had to do was look at him and say that girl’s name out loud. Her name wasn’t Miranda but let’s say it was. She would just look at my brother and say ‘Miranda?’ then he would instantly stop pursuing whatever stupid thing he was trying to talk his way into getting to do.
So there’s a story of a parent pulling their son out of an extremely toxic situation she had bad feelings about.”
