Did your mom and dad ever tell you life sucks??? Did they ever tell you it will get better??? How did they

[a kennedy]

tell you to just survive?? My mom and dad never said anything about their lives when they were getting older. MY GETTING OLDER SUCKS.

[Ocelot II]

1. When he got to be about 85 my dad said getting old isn't for sissies.

He was right.

[mwmisses4289]

15. I've seen that on bumper stickers for years...

and it is absolutely 💯 % true!

[Skittles]

2. my dad was a Depression-era survivor and my mum was a WWII bomb raid survivor

after that, the trials of getting older likely didn't seem as bad

[Shambala]

14. My parents as well

My dad grew up in the Back of The Yards in Chicago during the depression and told us he used to eat lard and salt sandwiches. My mom said her house was firebombed 5 times by the US during WWII.

[Skittles]

20. they were people who didn't just THINK bad things could happen

they KNEW they could

[questionseverything]

3. My dad used to say, " your bad days now will be your good days later"

[no_hypocrisy]

4. Mom used to tell me that life's not fair.

Boy, did she get that one right!

[Ocelot II]

6. I got that one, too.

I'd wail "That's not fair!!" about some transgression the world had inflicted on me, an innocent child, and Mom would just roll her eyes and say "Life's not fair." At the time I thought she was being mean for not properly sympathizing with me. But of course she was right.

[no_hypocrisy]

7. The words came back to me like an echo.

I contributed to the eulogy for my mother, 22 years ago this month. I made a list of "Mom-isms" (stuff that Mom repeated like a broken record) and "Life's not fair" was the last one. As the rabbi read the list of Mom-isms and got to the last one, I was staring at my mother's coffin and nodded.

[LSparkle]

8. My dad used to say "You want fair? Go to Pomona"

Site of the L.A. County Fair. 😀

[mwmisses4289]

16. I had a friend who always used say

"Life simply is. It's humans who are fair or unfair".
I haven't seen anything in life to refute that statemement.

[OldBaldy1701E]

17. BINGO!

It always makes me very angry when I hear people act like fairness is some kind of deific creation that enters our lives like the breath of gawd or whatever.

Fairness comes from human beings. Any unfairness in our culture comes from humans who want to keep that unfairness.

The fact that unfairness still exists in such a 'modern' society proves to me that we want it this way.

[OldBaldy1701E]

18. And, no, my parents did not teach me that. (n/t)

[Scrivener7]

5. I have a friend who always says, "You gotta go somehow." Another keeps getting different

cancers and each time she tells me, "What're you going to do, girlfriend. You just keep doing the next thing." (She's great now. All seem to be either cured or in remission.)

Both phrases are said as jokes, but they're pretty profound.

[Oeditpus Rex]

9. Nope, nope

and they didn't.

My life was always supposed to be "whatever I made of it." I guess that's what happens when you're the smartest kid in your elementary school. Your folks -- or, the dominant one, anyway -- think nothing will stand in your way.

Until it does.

[Grim Chieftain]

10. I pretty much grew up with my grandma who was the best person ever in my life.

Even though she was a woman of faith, she used to say "You get used to hanging if you hang long enough".

My husband likes to say, "That which doesn't kill me hurts me". Apologies to Nietzsche.

[LogDog75]

11. I don't ever recall them saying either of those

[Dem2theMax]

12. I wish.

I'll leave it at that.

[surrealAmerican]

13. My father used to say ...

... that growing old is for the birds, but it's better than the alternative.

[3catwoman3]

19. My father was very fond of saying that something would be "character building."

I knew that meant that whatever event, task, etc he was describing that way, it would be something that I didn't want to do and wouldn't enjoy doing.