I’ve been lucky enough to have a mother who has never pressured me to have kids. She’s fully embraced having grand kitties—though sometimes it means she takes their side when I tell her that they’re doing something annoying. Not everyone has a parent who’s like this, as seen in an AITA (Am I The Asshole) post where a woman talks about her mother-in-law always asking about grandbabies. Fortunately, the woman’s husband is on his wife’s side, stepping up as the one who tells his mother to back off—especially since they want to have kids, they just aren’t ready yet.
That’s pretty responsible of the couple, in my opinion, but this mother-in-law insists on being impatient about it. The solution to this issue? Yodeling. Wait, what?
Yodel-Lay-Hee-Hoo indeed
Unsurprisingly, the post starts with the woman revealing that she and her mother-in-law have never had “the best relationship.” However, unlike a lot of these stories that I’ve covered (like, an uncomfortable amount of them), her husband (named Keith in the post) actually defends his wife. “He very much is my bodyguard around her and stops her every time she tries to say anything.” Great! “But it has never stopped her much anyway.” Not so great.
Beth (the name given to the mother-in-law) really wants the couple to have kids. She’s wanted this since before they were married, often telling Keith that they are her, quote, “last hope of true happiness.” Jesus Beth, chill. However, Beth is unable to chill and has gone so far as to BRIBE the couple to try and get them to get the ball rolling on childbirth. Apparently, she’s offered to buy them a house? Yeah, I’m sure there are no strings attached there, I totally believe that a woman like Beth wouldn’t insist on having her own room at the house…
Yeah, that definitely was NOT a free, no-strings-attached home offer and I’m glad OP and her husband nope’d out of that one. pic.twitter.com/hts2iuAIEL
— Jen (@such_hockey_wow) June 29, 2022
Keith, seeing how frustrated his wife is with the constant harassment about having kids, decides to increase his efforts in getting his mother to stop. Enter yodeling. Why yodeling? I dunno, maybe it’s kinder than throwing tomatoes? “My husband learned how to yodel when he was in high school. Yodel is a loose term too, it’s more like he makes a loud obnoxious sound for a long period of time and calls it yodeling.” Oh okay, maybe that’s why.
So Keith begins to, quote, “yodel” at his mother whenever she brings up children. “It was the funniest thing I’d ever seen and immediately shut her up.” Good. Well, kinda. Because, eventually, Beth decides to change tactics. The family soon goes out to celebrate Keith’s parents’ anniversary. Now in a public setting, Beth decides to bring up the subject again even if Keith had, once again, asked her not to. “Well, she didn’t care and thought because we were somewhere nice my husband wouldn’t yodel… and she was wrong.” Welp, that’s called, ahem, yodeling around and finding out.
It was the fuck aroundest of times
— Liz A-O (@LizzardLou) June 29, 2022
It was the find outest of times
“your husband is an adult. If he wants to yodel, you don’t really get a say” is a fantastic piece of life advice we should all live by.
— Rebecca Jules (@RebeccaJJules) June 29, 2022
But honestly, MIL thought she was gonna get away with pushing her grandchildren agenda with social expectations in a nice restaurant to keep her son quiet and lost hard bc she wouldn’t respect either of them saying stop it. So, Op is NTA.
— Mischievous Scamp🖤🌈 (@toomusic3) June 29, 2022
“He did it for so loud and so long that everyone in the restaurant was staring by the end. It embarrassed her so badly she almost started crying.” As to be expected, the family thinks that the couple is a bunch of assholes. Keith, on the other hand, feels justified in his actions. His wife thinks she should’ve stopped her husband a long time ago so they could talk it out like adults… even if, technically, they’d already tried that.
The consensus on this is a general NTA (Not The Asshole) with a few offering thoughts and prayers to the patrons at the restaurant. I think if I were there my nosey ass would pretend to be going to the bathroom, walk past the table, and quietly ask what’s happening. It certainly would be a story I’d talk about with others for a long while.
It’s weird as hell, but I guarantee if I was out somewhere nice and some man just started “yodeling” till his mother cried while his wife is cracking the hell up I’d be talking about that night for the rest of my life
— Sarah is tired as shit (@dipronio3d) June 29, 2022
(Featured image: Disney)
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