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Laughing Out Loud |
Mother was watching some daytime quiz show on TV, volume up to the max and then she started talking continuously, in a voice so loud she was throwing it, back at the TV. She wasn't just cheering on one of the contestants, she was doing a running commentary, echoing back what was going on, as if those in the tele needed to be told and holding a conversation with the thing, non-stop.
We've had conversations in the past, where she really did not seem to know the difference between real human beings and soap characters, so, maybe in her little mind, that box is a real person sitting in the corner of her living room?
And it's funny how the TV is always too loud when I set the volume (lower than she does), yet she keeps turning it up much higher. I've seen her with the remote in her hand, finger on the volume button, and, at the same time, the volume display on the screen, shows it going up, then, when I say something about it, she claims that the TV keeps turning itself up - i.e. has a malfunction.
Today, with the combined noise of the very loud TV and her almost shouting, even though I was right across the other side of the house, I could barely hear myself think and I certainly couldn't concentrate. So, trying a reasonably tactful approach, I called out that "I’m not there" (to hear her), inferring that I thought that she might be talking to me, even though I knew she wasn't.
What I got back was a tirade of abuse informing me, in no uncertain terms that she was not talking to me, then attempting to justify talking to the TV simply because, she says, I talk to the cats.
Well, hell, cats are living things and, maybe don't understand exact words, but they do understand and respond to tone. I never met a TV that did, did you?
This isn’t a comparison that even makes any sense, but I only got as far as the bit about cats at least being living things, when she immediately insisted it's the same thing, slammed the door, snapping at me to shut up.
That's all I get, constantly: she attacks when she knows she's wrong. Every time she senses that she needs to "excuse" herself out of something, she reacts by twisting it round, attacking me and trying to make out that it was my fault.
Admitting her own responsibility would be mature. She doesn't do mature.
Minutes later, subject dropped, she acts like it never happened, of course, because she KNOWS it's wrong and she WANTS it to have never happened.
If I had a quid for every time she's told me to shut up in a similar manner in the last few days alone, I'd have bus fare to somewhere reasonably far off. Further actually, as I certainly wouldn't be buying a return ticket!
And she was there ages afterwards, cackling away at the TV like a madwoman, which would be perfectly "normal" really, were it not for the fact that last time she was in Tenerife, she had the f*cking nerve to accuse me of "laughing like a madwoman" called me mad, crazy, touched and launched a tirade of various other insulting names at me. Why? Because I'd laughed out loud at a joke on TV. As you do. Said she did not need to laugh out loud EVER to enjoy something - inferring, snottily in her superior tone, that doing so was coarse behaviour.
Pot, kettle, black ...
