You are not able to choose your family, which is sometimes good and sometimes bad. Therefore, we are forced to be ready for both nice and not-so-nice surprises in life.

Story 1:

My husband and I have our phones on silent until at least 10 a.m. on weekends. So, we’re sleeping.

Suddenly, I wake up to the sound of my husband pulling on shorts and a T-shirt. Immediately, the intercom rings. I ask him, “Who is it?” He replies, “Police.”

It turns out that my mom sent me a screenshot of the water meter in messenger at 7 or 8 a.m. And 2 ticks didn’t appear.

She started calling me at 8 a.m., but my phone died overnight. She called my husband, and his phone was on silent.

He read her message that he had to open the door to the police because they were helping to search her missing child only at 10 a.m. To say I was angry is an understatement. We are 37 years old.

Source: © Zosia1987 / Pikabu

Story 2

I stopped inviting my son’s friend over because his mother had so many rules. He could not eat hot dogs or grapes — choking hazard. No hamburgers at restaurants or at our house because they might not be cooked through. No playing outside without an adult present to watch. This was through sixth grade, even.

I could go on, she’d email us during the school pancake feed fundraiser, to tell us that she was watching and thought they probably kept the batter cold enough to prevent salmonella, so it’s okay that our son ate the pancakes. That kind of thing. The great thing is, her kid was really pretty normal. In contrast, I invited another friend over for him, and they were outside monkeying around and got a kite caught in the tree.

His mom came to get him, saw it up there, scoffed at their efforts to fish it out with a rake, and ordered her son to climb up and get it. He hesitated, and she was like, “Get up there!” So he scrabbled up there like a monkey while I thought, “Yes, this is a normal childhood.”

Source: © FeatofClay / Reddit