#that's my dad's dad

[inbabylontheywept]

Weird Grandpa Dale Story #1

The day started with me digging up cactus. Grandpa Dale had a weird beef with cactuses, bad enough to pay me 10 cents for every pound I turned in. Looking back at it, I think they offended him because they could exist without his consent: They didn't need his water, they didn't need his fertilizer, and they certainly didn't need his permission. 

And that, he simply could not abide. 

Grandpa Dale had been doing something weird that whole morning. I knew because I'd been able to watch him since sunrise. Every time I took a break from digging cactus to look back at the house, I saw him doing something with the gopher holes. 

That made me nervous. Things never went well when he started messing with the gophers.  Earlier that month he'd tried gassing them out, and all he got from that effort was nasty looking blisters up both arms. He almost never complained about anything, but he griped all day about how bad those blisters hurt. When his wife suggested that he go to the hospital he said No, what am I gonna tell them? That my trench got overrun? They wouldn't buy that. They'd think I was cooking meth. 

Which was funny to hear, but also, true, and also, enough for me to know better than to get involved in future gopher battles. 

Which is to admit that I did get involved. But I should've known better. A few hours in, he invited me over, gave me a cold soda, and showed me what he had set up: Two camping chairs, a wicked sharp shovel, a car battery, and a long length of copper wire leading to a pit he'd dug in the middle of the yard. Told me that if I stayed a bit and took a break, cooled down there with a soda in the shade, I'd see something amazing. I asked him if there was even a chance I could get hurt by this "something amazing", and he said "no," which I knew was a bald faced lie. But I believed him because I wanted to believe him. Because I wanted to know what he'd done, and I wanted to sit there in the shade with my grandpa. I also figured, hey, maybe getting gassed taught him a lesson. 

(Never, ever assume that the kind of person willing to break out chemical weapons against gophers is capable of being taught a lesson.) 

So I sat down in my chair and he beamed at that. He loved having an audience. Then I watched him lean forward and tap the ends of the wire against the battery terminals.

And that's where everything went wrong.  

The first thing that hit me was the yard itself. Little bits of sand and grit flying fast enough to hit my skin and bite. It took a year and change for all the little bits to work their way out. But I didn't even feel it at the time, because of what happened after. 

I genuinely think he'd imagined the gophers getting launched out of the holes, disoriented but alive. I think that shovel was there to finish them off afterwards. Which also would've been traumatizing, but probably less so than watching each of those cute little gopher holes projectile vomit bloody piles of tattered critter all over the lawn. 

Which, spoiler alert, is exactly what happened. The sky fell down, and the ground flew up, and the gophers found themselves with nowhere to go. So they did the next best thing and went a little bit everywhere.

I don't think it was actually silent afterwards, but I couldn't hear shit. There was just this long, ringing period of us looking at each other, then the meat piles, then the lawn crater, then the big buckled section of yard that looked oddly like Rockies just behind us, then back to each other. 

I think I did that two or three times before I felt my shoulders start to shake a little. I was crying. Felt weird to cry and not be able to hear it. Like a tic almost, or the way your body seizes up right before you puke. 

And then I looked at his face, and I saw him mouth a single soundless word: 

Shit.

[wishfulsketching]

Silco and his terror of a daughter

[valtsv]

stuck between "psychological horror statement" and "objectively the funniest thing you could say to your real flesh and blood dad" in the father's day card aisle

[bookwyrminspiration]

I can behave normally around books

[kenapiece-main]

Can you believe I'm having to make this meme even after successfully finishing up taxes and applying to job

[twinliches]

my family is fucking addicted to macgyvering and it's becoming a problem. every time something in this house breaks, instead of doing the sensible thing of replacing it or calling someone qualified to fix it, we all group around the offending object with a manic look in our eyes and everyone gets a try at fixing it while being cheered on or ridiculed by the rest.

it's a beautiful bonding activity, but the "creative" fixes have turned our house into a quasihaunted escape room like contraption where everything works, but only in the wonkiest of ways. you need a huge block of iron to turn on the stove. the oven only works if a specific clock is plugged in. the bread machine has a huge wood block just stapled to it that has become foundational to its function. sometimes when you use the toaster the doorbell rings. and that's just the kitchen.

it's all fun and games until you have guests over and you have to lay out the rules of the house like it's a fucking board game. welcome to the beautiful guest room. don't pull out the couch yourself you need a screwdriver for that, and that metal rod makes the lamp work so don't move it. it also made me a terrifying roommate in college, because it makes me think i can fix anything with enough hubris and a drill. you want to call the landlord about a leaky faucet? as if. one time my dad made me install a new power socket because we ran our of extension cords

[froody]

cis people will say “I found out I’m having a baby girl at my anatomy scan and I’m experiencing gender disappointment” but be mad when you say “who knows? maybe you’ll end up with a son anyway”

[imagine-darksiders]

He a little confused but he's got spirit

[hotroadkill]

collection

[lokutofu]

World’s Greatest Detective fails to correctly identify his children 😭

[blenselche]

well it finally happened

so my dad is almost 80, this man's been making Spirk content since Star Trek started airing basically

he never knew ao3 existed, he just thought people stopped writing fanfic when ff.net died, like it was a fad that had outgrown him or smth

he clicked an ao3 link in my pinned last night, realizing that they were in fact clickable

he's mad at me for not telling him earlier. "I don't have a lot of years left in me and there's so much to read"

he's gonna spend his whole retirement reading trek fanfic now jesus christ

[darlingofdots]

my parents are on holiday in their mobile home

they're expected back this upcoming weekend

I just spent ten days in my childhood home to keep an eye on things

I have hidden 100 small yellow ducks all over the house

I am very excited for my parents to be back

[inbabylontheywept]

i did wrestling in middle school. on one hand, i was actually quite good at it, which was nice. being good at any sport was a new achievement for me. on the other hand, i was bi, and i was trying very hard not to notice that i was bi, and getting folded into knots by very kind, very muscular dorks made that task somewhat difficult.

adding fire to the problem was that my parents and my grandparents wanted to watch my matches, because they were very proud that their Gangly Nerd Son was actually Sporting, and they wanted to cheer me on. which would've been sweet and all, but if there are four people you do not want there during a key part of your Burgeoning Sexual Awakening, it is your mom and your dad and your grandma and your grandpa.

right? i mean, imagine some guy's got your head in his armpit, and you're going you know, old sweat smells bad, but fresh sweat has a sort of and then you make eye contact with your grandpa in the stands and you remember you're swearing spandex so if you pop a boner people aren't just going to be able to see the outline, they're going to be able to count the veins, and the only way you will be able to restore your family's honor after that would be by moving to siberia and renouncing joy, forever. that, or lift your entire body up by your kneck then twist 180 degrees without paralyzing yourself.

it’s a lot of pressure, is what i’m saying.

still it did motivate me to win my matches really fast. because i was so tall and skinny, i was stupidly good at the double leg takedown, and then once someone was knocked down, i'd just do the half nelson and kind of flip em over for the pin. then the ref would count to three and i’d win. EZPZ.

i had one match where that went great. won in the first ten seconds, sat back down, and prepared myself for a good hour or two of doing fuck all. didn't even feel bad the parents/grandparents were gonna be bored. the matches went up from me in 5 pound increments (i was in the 115 lbs division) and it was going great until we got to the 145 lbs division. the other school's wrestler stepped onto the mat, and she turned out to be a girl so our guy flipped, because for straight guys, wrestling a girl is not a pleasant experience.

i'm not entirely unsympathetic. my experience wrestling dudes was definitely a little traumatic. but also, i dealt. guy could've dealt too. instead, he refused to wrestle, and the coach went - fine. not even worth fighting over.

so he went to the 140 pounder, and that guy said, nosir, my mom said mormons can't wrestle girls. next guy down, 135 pounder, now he knew he could pull the same card and thus did. 130 pounder, 125, both tapped out. he got to the 120 guy, and that guy was catholic, but he said he was considering being mormon, and thus would have to pass. as a precaution.

coach blew up a little at that. he said "is there anyone - anyone - on this entire goddamn team that is willing to wrestle a girl?" and then he pointed at me and said "YOU. MAT. GO."

and i'll be real, if i'd been paying more attention, i'd have pulled the mormon card too, but i'd just been putting all that audio into a buffer file because i was reading, so i was halfway across the mat before i even processed what had been said and by then it was too late to turn back.

still i had a plan. and my plan - my beautiful, perfect plan - was to do what i'd always done. tackle, flip, pin, win. sit down. read. bore my family to death. move on.

i got the first part right. she was bigger than me, but she wasn't taller. just an incredibly stout woman. god built me like a snake with glasses, just as he built her like a combat cube. the problem was the half nelson. soon as she was down, i tried hooking my arm under hers from behind and for both genders, the defense for this move is just clamping your arms really fucking tight against your sides. if you're a guy, that's whatever, but if you're a girl - especially if you're god's chosen combat cube - that pins your opponents hand right against your boob.

so, i got the hook in, she clamped, my whole arm pressed against something soft, my coach was yelling THE HALF NELSON. BABYLON! JUST FINISH IT! FINISH THE HALF NELSON! and i was just trying to press hard enough to finish, when then my brain went

...oh.

and i flipped out. of course i flipped out. i like girls, and touching a boob is an elemental experience, and i was not ready. i was not prepared. i had not committed the sacred rites. i recoiled like i'd just brushed my arm against the surface of the sun, stood up, and backed away. nobody in the room knew why i'd given up. all they saw was me, right about to win, suddenly flailing around and scrambling. so everyone started screaming at me to just get the half nelson again, and i couldn't really yell back there's a fuckin' boob in the way and it was very distressing, and the only way i could think of to make them stop was just doing it over again the right way.

so i did.

i hunkered down and prepared myself for Wrasslin' Attempt #2: The Sequel.

i knocked her down again, EZPZ. i went for the half nelson again, but she knew what i was about to do so she super clamped, and i knew she was gonna super clamp, so i wound my arm back like a pop-eye cartoon punch before swinging my arm through the gap between her bicep and her side, but the amount of time i spent winding back super signalled what i was about to to do, which gave her time to clamp even harder, which somehow redirected the entire force of the popeye punch to the bottom of her bra.

it spat out a single boob the same way an action hero might spit out one single tooth after getting a solid crack across the jaw. as if to say:

*ptooie.* "that all you got?"

i did not actually see this. my experience was that first there was an arm, then there was a bit of boob, but i was braced, i was ready, forward at all costs, tatakae motherfuckers, and then the boob went away, and i didn't know where it went but my team, and the audience, and everyone who was in front of me, they all gasped like i just kicked them in the stomach. except for my coach. he was behind me, and thus one of the four people in the room who did not see the boob. now my mom, my dad, my grandma, and my grandpa, they all got flashed but nooooooo, coach thunderbutt was behind me, and he didn't see shit so he was still yelling NOOOOOO BABYLON WHAT ARE YOU DOING JUST FINISH THE NELSON! GO FOR THE KILL! BABYLON! BABYLON!

but i did not go for the kill. i stood up and she stuffed her boob back real fast, and we just kind of circled each other awkwardly until time ran out and i won on points. that's not technically allowed, but the ref had some mercy on me.

my coach did not.

i barely had time to sit down before he strode over to the bench to chew me out.

"babylon," he said, in that very calm way people get when they're too pissed to yell. "why didn't you pin?"

and i didn't know how to say well coach, i tried, but there was a boob, and it kept getting in the way, and my mom was watching, and so was my dad, and so was his dad, and his mom, and god (like bible god) and that's a can of worms because i'm pretty sure he was already mad at me, and i'm wearing spandex, and i think i might have to move to siberia, so instead i said

"i uh. i forgot how to do the half nelson."

which is actually impossible. forgetting how to do the half nelson is like forgetting how to swallow your spit.

and he looked at me, like i was the dumbest person in the entire world, and i looked through him like i'd just survived my 250th day in a trench at verdun, and he said: fine.

fine.

but we're all going to practice it for an hour tomorrow because you forgot.

and then he left.

and my buddies had the gall to be salty about it. i got so many comments saying "dude, why didn't you just tell him the truth?" and i said "you can if you care so damn much. you could've wrestled the girl too. maybe someone else should do the hard thing today."

but they didn't. so the next day, we did an hour of half nelson drills, and i spent a decent amount of time getting thrown around the mat, and it was pleasant in exactly the way that i hated and the year after that, to the surprise of everyone but myself, i quit wrestling and joined the trivia team.

and if you want more reasons to love my mom, my grandpa joked after the match that i might have to talk to my bishop about it, and my mom told him he would be allowed to make jokes after he stood in front of a crowd of 110 people in spandex underpants while wrestling a woman that was not his wife.

he paused for almost five seconds after that. then he said: aw. hell. sorry babylon.

and i'd have preferred my apology from god, but getting it from him was pretty good too.

[marskiiii]

TOOK FOREVER BUT SOOOOOO WORTH IT!

aka mY IDEAL BATFAM UNIVERSE TYVMUCHBYEEE

[wishfulsketching]

I know you’re probably super busy but I HAVE to share this with someone. I found this absolutely insane shirt at my job (thrift store) and it’s been killing me to imagine Silco in it

You can't drop something like this to my askbox and not expect me to draw something

Moms usually drop the kids off to their playdate, time for the dads to meet.

[aroacedavestrider]

people will hear you talk about struggling with mental illness and say “you can do anything if you just put your mind to it”. brother what part of the body does the mental illness happen in. what do you think is the problem