The blog post by Jennifer on A Broad Abroad writing how her dear mother-in-law murdered the microwave inspired me to write about all the things my in-laws have successfully destroyed so far. At first I could only think of a couple of things however as I delved into my memories I came up with more and more sad stories.
I don’t know how my in-laws are doing this but somehow they are able to brake something on a weekly basis. They are not clumsy or something like that (Well, MIL is!) but disaster seems to follow them. FIL is still a novice compared to MIL though even though he has already a destruction value counter going into the few hundred Euros.
The problem in this whole thing is that there are so many little things which broke already that I will just focus on the situations which are basically burned into my memory and only done by MIL.
The time MIL broke our toaster. During her three months stay last spring she broke few things. First thing which gave up on us was our beloved toaster. No, the electronic parts didn’t break nor did MIL throw it down. It is a bit more weird than that. The toaster had this function to warm up bread on top of it so when you wanted to use it you had to push a button and a bread holder came up. Whatever MIL did to the toaster it ended up that there was no more warming up function has the button was hanging loosely around and the bread holder was suddenly missing!
The time MIL broke the towel holder in the bathroom. We had next to the sink two metal towel holders attached to the wall. They were pretty stable but I noticed when my in-laws were with us two years ago that they became more and more loose. Then when MIL was last year with us suddenly both arms detached themselves from the wall one by one within few days. My guess is that both of my in-laws were using the towel holders to lean on or they were putting some random heavy things on them.
The time MIL broke the seatbelt in our new car. Last Spring MIL somehow managed to entangle the seatbelt in the fond of the car where she was always sitting. Later the seatbelt gave up entirely and did not even roll into its normal position after using. Both my wife and I believe that MIL was actually rather happy about it as she hates to use seatbelts. Most of the times she did the “fake” buckling up by just holding the seatbelt around her body so it looked that she was using the belt the proper way…Really wonder why so many Chinese are kind of allergic to safety measurements in daily life and come up with all kinds of ways to not use them.
The time MIL broke a decorative purse from a not so cheap brand. The purse thingy belonged to my wife and she got it from her work. When crazy mother-in-law was with us she tried to open it. Mind you, it was a decorative item, not meant to be used at all due to its delicate structure. As you can guess MIL had suddenly two parts of the purse in her hands and blamed the poor quality.
You know what the best thing about this all is? MIL’s denial! Some time after she stayed with us last year my wife was asking her mother how she felt about breaking so many things. The answer was the standard MIL answer I had heard so often before “Something broke? I didn’t breake anything, ever”…
When my in-laws are alone at home and MIL is breaking something it is usually FILs fault. “Why was this vase standing there, why have you moved it there? No wonder I got against it and it fell down!”, the vase in question had been standing at the same spot for the past few years.
P.S. mom-in-law did not break the room from the featured image, at least that I did on my own…
Do you have a clumsy person in the family, or even a dear mother-in-law who brings sometimes disaster into the household?
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