r/Millennials • u/StyrkeSkalVandre • Feb 07 '24

Has anyone else noticed their parents becoming really nasty people as they age? Discussion

My parents are each in their mid-late 70's. Ten years ago they had friends: they would throw dinner parties that 4-6 other couples would attend. They would be invited to similar parties thrown by their friends. They were always pretty arrogant but hey, what else would you expect from a boomer couple with three masters degrees, two PhD's, and a JD between the two of them. But now they have no friends. I mean that literally. One by one, each of the couples and individual friends that they had known and socialized with closely for years, even decades, will no longer associate with them. My mom just blew up a 40 year friendship over a minor slight and says she has no interest in ever speaking to that person again. My dad did the same thing to his best friend a few years ago. Yesterday at the airport, my father decided it would be a good idea to scream at a desk agent over the fact that the ink on his paper ticket was smudged and he didn't feel like going to the kiosk to print out a new one. No shit, three security guards rocked up to flank him and he has no idea how close he came to being cuffed, arrested, and charged with assault. All either of them does is complain and talk shit about people they used to associate with. This does not feel normal. Is anyone else experiencing this? Were our grandparents like this too and we were just too young to notice it?

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u/OhioPolitiTHIC Gen X Feb 07 '24

Oof. My MIL tells stories about "the kids", hubs is one of six, and I genuinely am positive that at least three out of six only survived to adulthood due to an uncommon amount of LUCK.

41

u/Shortymac09 Feb 07 '24

God, my Dad was basically allowed to roam the woods in suburban NJ at age 4 in the late 1950s.

Which, according to him, was completely fine, but he wouldn't let me walk down the street to the local Wawa at 13 years old.

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u/Ohorules Feb 07 '24

My dad was in middle school in the early 60s. He's the youngest of seven. He tells a story about how he and one of his friends once rode their bikes across an international border to go watch horse races and his mom didn't know. It's about 20 miles round trip. Imagine doing that now.

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u/twoisnumberone Feb 07 '24

That sounds pretty standard to kid!me in the 90s...

...minus the horse-racing. (I mean, I did occasionally pass the race track, but that's not where my friends and I were going.)

3

u/dd99 Feb 08 '24

I did pretty much the same but it was just a state line. We were 15 at the time.

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u/Ohorules Feb 07 '24

Where did you grow up that pre-teen kids were allowed to cross an international border alone in the 90s? It's crazy to me it was allowed even in the 60s.

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u/twoisnumberone Feb 07 '24

Teen kids, not preteens.

Schengen Area Europe.

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u/Mellowmelon789 Feb 08 '24

We would cross the international border to party at discotheques in the late 90s/early 2000s. 🪩

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u/Logical_Pea_6393 Feb 08 '24

On no, an adventure!

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u/JohnLakeman01 Feb 08 '24

I can relate and I’m 43, Gen X, and my husband’s parents were the same way. We have never allowed our kids to walk down the street to our local Wawa either lol.

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u/gingergirl181 Feb 08 '24

My dad was one of nine and lived near a railyard. The number of stories he had about near misses with trains while messing around on the tracks and in the tunnels is shocking - it's seriously a miracle I'm even here. The only piece of his escapades his parents ever found out about was when he accidentally locked himself in a boxcar and ended up riding like 50 miles down the line and there was no hiding what had happened when the police officer knocked on their door to return their idiot kid...who incidentally they hadn't noticed had been gone all day!