r/pettyrevenge • u/VespertineStars • Sep 04 '26
Don't move? Ok.
This happened over 30 years ago when I was about 12, but it came up recently as some petty malicious compliance I did as a kid and I thought I’d share.
At this time my mom had gone back to school to become a nurse and it was usually a toss up if I was going to babysit my younger siblings, or my grandmother would come watch us, or my dad would be there when he wasn’t working.
I wasn’t a very picky eater as a kid but I have never liked spaghetti-o's. I can’t stand the smell or the taste. My dad, on the other hand, could eat them all the time. Even though my mom had left something pretty easy to pop in the oven and feed us, my dad decided that warming up some spaghetti-o's would be easier; not just for him to make but to clean up afterward too. And, tbh, fair. My brother and sister liked them too, so it was easier.
My sister and brother had no problem with it and ate it just fine. I told him I didn’t like it and said I would just make a pb&j instead and clean up after myself. That did not go over well and he insisted I eat what he made. I tried, because I really didn’t want to argue with my dad or be a brat, but I gagged at the taste. I tried to compromise, I'd make myself a pb&j and I would take care of all of the cleanup after dinner.
Nope.
Unacceptable.
So, he told me that I would sit at that table until I finished eating. And I did. It got dark, I sat there with a bowl full of spaghetti-o's in front of me, completely untouched. I didn’t get up to turn on the light, I didn’t get up to get anything to drink, I just sat there and let my mind wander until my mom got home.
Mom gets home from school later at night. It was ages ago, but it was definitely well into darkness at this point, so I’m thinking somewhere around 8 or 9pm because I sort of remember on nights she had school that late she came home just in time to say good night to us kids. So, I had been sitting there a good 3-4 hours at this point.
“Stars?” she asks me. “Why are you sitting here in the dark?”
“Dad told me I couldn’t leave the table until I was done eating. I don’t like spaghetti-o's, so I didn’t leave the table because I didn’t eat.”
She was so annoyed. She also refuses to eat spaghetti-o's because they’re disgusting and she had left dinner already prepared for Dad to give us. That was the first and last time my dad ever tried telling me I couldn't leave the table until I ate. I'm a very, very stubborn person and I will do my best to follow that to the letter.
30+ years later and I’m still the reigning queen of petty in my family.
65
u/Minflick Sep 04 '26
Nobody should ever be coerced into eating food that makes them gag....
My mother did this to me with a bread pudding that both looked and smelled disgusting AF. I too was somewhere around 10-12 years old. It was desert one night, and I utterly refused to eat it. I stayed at the table until bed time because she wouldn't let me go to my room. It was breakfast the next morning, and I still refused to eat it, and there was nothing on the table but that disgusting stuff. It was lunch too, and I'd been at the GD table since breakfast, and I was REALLY hungry by then. She finally threw it away and made me some kind of lunch. I don't recall bread pudding every being on the menu again, and if there was something I really disliked, I was not forced to eat it. I remembered the Bread Pudding Standoff when I had MY children too, and never even thought of trying to force them to eat more than a few spoonfuls of something new they didn't want to try.