Entitled Parents

"Our GRADE SCHOOL age kids are friends, give me your CAR!"

Back in grade school, I was a shy kid that didn't make many friends. There was a girl, we'll call her K, that I ended up being friends with. K was always a little off, but she was nice, we enjoyed playing together, and we'd often go to each other's houses as we lived only a block away from each other. Or rather, she lived a block or so from my grandmother's house, which is where I would go after school for 3 or 4 hours until one of my parents got off work and came to take me home. I'm now 21 so the details may be hazy, but I'll recount the events as best I can remember.

It may have just been that I was a kid at the time, but I'd honestly not seen any red flags our entire friendship that her family might be crazy, other than the "offness" that plagued K and her sisters and mom (I don't know where their dad was, I never heard of or saw him, and he definitely didn't live with them). It's kind of hard to explain, but it was like a mix of super Christian sterilization of violence and language, general slowness, and the inability to understand people's emotions or reactions. As a kid I just thought they were kinda dumb and that that was the extent of it.

That was not the extent of it.

Back then, my parents had two cars - my mom drove a nice Subaru Outback-esque car (I don't remember the make or model, just what it looked like) and my dad drove a nice little Geo Metro. It had excellent gas mileage, was in near perfect condition (my dad is a damn good mechanic and kept his cars running very well), and was an all around useful little thing. My father loved it.

Both my parents worked full time to support my sister and I. We didn't have a ton of money, but we had enough to get by for the most part, and local aid programs handled the rest when their jobs just barely couldn't. I don't know what sort of work K or her family did, or what programs they were on or anything, but K's mom, 3 daughters, and another female relative all lived in one house, in a nice neighborhood, so it was definitely working for them. Only thing was, they didn't have a car.

One day, K's mom walks down to pick up K, and meets my dad for the first time, since it was just when he was coming to pick me up. For the rest of this story, K's mom is the entitled parent - EP.

My dad is a charismatic man, and struck up a conversation and was friendly and all. EP was friendly too, and kept eyeing the Geo Metro while talking to him, commenting that it was a nice little car. My dad, being a gearhead, took that as an invitation to go on about how much he liked it - the excellent milleage, the comfort of driving, how small and cozy it was, etc. I didn't think much of it at the time, nor did my dad.

Sometime during the next week, I'm at my grandmother's house and there's a knock on the door. I don't know who it is, so I wait for my grandmother to answer it. She speaks to the person at the door, before inviting them in - and that's when I realized it was EP. I was pretty confused, but EP said she just wanted to wait 10 minutes or so until my dad got there to pick me up, because she wanted to chat or whatever. Odd... but okay, I didn't really care.

My dad gets there, and sees EP. He's a bit surprised, and at first worried that there might have been something wrong or that something had happened. EP assures him nothing was wrong, and then immediately states "Can I see your keychain?"

My dad is a bit confused, says yes, and holds up the keys in his hand. EP gets up and walks over for a closer look.

EP: "Which one's for that green car?" (the Geo is a light green color)
Dad: "Uhh... this one..." (he gestures at the key) "...why?"
EP: "Let me see it."
Dad: "Why?"
EP: "Let me see it!"
Dad: (putting the keychain down and keeping it kind of away from her, then in a firmer tone of voice) "Why?"
At this point I'm getting a little scared and confused, my grandmother is just confused, EP is getting visibly agitated, and my dad is really wary of all of this.
EP: "You know I need a car, I was just wondering if I could have the green one. You said it's really nice, and I don't have a car."
Dad: "You mean just GIVE it to you? Um, no, it's my car and I need it to get to and from work. I can trade you the car for another one if you really want it, or sell it to you so I can buy another one, but I can't just give you the car, that's insane."
EP: "You can just use your wife's car, can't you? You don't need TWO cars, that's kind of selfish."
(my dad doesn't answer, just stares at her in presumably shock)
EP: (even more upset, getting a little loud) "I THOUGHT our kids were FRIENDS, would you really let the family of your daughter's FRIEND be without a car?"
Dad: "Uhhhh... our daughters might be friends, but we're not. And even if we were, I'm not just going to give my car away for free. I can't afford that, and if I could, I'd just buy you a car at that point instead of giving you mine."
EP: (turning to me) "AND HOW DO YOU THINK K WOULD FEEL IF SHE KNEW YOUR DAD WAS SO SELFISH, OP?" (looking at my dad again) "I CAN'T BELIEVE EITHER OF YOU! THIS IS SO SELFISH OF YOU TO HAVE TWO CARS WHEN I DON'T EVEN HAVE ONE!"

This must have made my dad angry enough to recover from his previous shock, because he demands that EP leave, and after she storms out, he apologizes to me and his mother.

After this... I never saw K again at school. I am dead serious - about halfway through the year, after this happens, I did not see her. I have no idea why - I know they later moved to a nearby town altogether, but not for several months. I didn't even see K at recess. Did her mother switch schools? Keep her from school? Did she get sick? I honestly have no idea. And while the "conclusion" is minor, this isn't even where it ends.

Maybe a year and a half after that stuff happened, I was going to the birthday party of another girl I knew, let's call her "D". Something I didn't know was that D was a distant cousin of K, and that K and her mom were going to come to this party. D also didn't even know that EP hated my family, until we both got there and it was... awkward. EP just straight up left, and K refused to even look at me the entire time. I assume that after our parents argued, EP went home and bitched to K about my family being selfish and how terrible we were. Not only that, but while I was at this party my phone got stolen. It was a Motorola Razor - back when that was the shit, and having one made you instantly popular. My parents had saved up for probably the better part of a year to get it for me for my birthday! I left it on the curb outside the party, literally right next to me, as I was waiting for my dad. During that time, there was no one outside, except for K coming out briefly. When I got up to leave, it was gone - and I never saw it again.

I know K stole it, and my dad confronted EP over the phone about it - EP instantly went fucking off, yelling at my dad over the phone loud enough that I could hear it in the other room, though I couldn't understand all of what she said. Something about how K wasn't a thief, I was a liar, I was stupid, and the icing on the cake, I will never forget this:

"...and so what even if she DID? YOU people would DESERVE it, I never got MY car! Her stupid phone isn't worth that anyways, so it's only fair that K gets to have it! You're SO SELFISH! You can AFFORD a Motorola for OP, so that means you could have bought me ANOTHER CAR like you PROMISED!! YOU PROMISED ME YOU TOLD ME THAT YOU WOULD BUY ME ANOTHER CAR!!! YOU WILL GO TO HELL FOR YOUR GREED! YOU COULDN'T EVEN GIVE ME A CAR YOU DON'T NEED HOW DARE YOU!!"

She started off yelling, but by the end she practically screeched, and I could barely understand what she said. My dad promptly hung up on her and eventually had to turn his phone off because she called him back like 10 times immediately after. He also did inform the police that he suspected K or EP stole my phone, but they never got around to actually looking for it, or at the very least they never found it, despite EP pretty much confessing that K had it. RIP my 4 month old phone that my parents worked their asses off to get for me.