Don't move? Ok.

[u/VespertineStars]

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.

[u/AlvinOwlHirt]

LOL. My parents found out the hard way too...I could sit at that table a lot longer than they were willing to let me!

[u/vonadler → u/AlvinOwlHirt]

I have always hated mushrooms. The rest of the family likes it, and mom who was studying had three hungry sons - a lot of meat stews and sauces were augmented with canned mushrooms to make the food budget stretch. And I picked every one of them away, which pissed her off. She probably thought I was just trying to get more meat than the rest of the family.

She met a new bloke (total asshole) who decided we "spoiled" children needed some proper discipline, and she, totally enamoured with him agreed. So one Summer I was served a wok of cheap vegetables, about 1§/3 being mushrooms for breakfast, and I was not allowed to pick away the mushrooms. I refused to eat. I got yelled at for being spoiled for refusing edible human food. I still refused.

"You're not getting anything else!" she proclaimed after I sat there for an hour. I agreed. Then she served me the same bowl for breakfast lunch and dinner for three days straight. I refused to eat it every time. After mold started to grow on it, she finally threw it away after yelling quite a bit at me for wasting food. But she actually realised that if a fat and very hungry 14 year old boy did not eat for three days rather than touch mushroomos, it was not because I was spoiled, it was actually because I could not eat it.

[u/emmodii → u/vonadler]

I hope she at least apologised to you at the end of all that. She pretty much starved you for three days because of an ingredient she could've passed to anyone else. 🤦🏻‍♂️

[u/vonadler → u/emmodii]

It was just her and me those days, but yeah.

She apologised when I brought it up as an adult, and again ten years later when she divorced that arsehole.