19-year-old defends her 70-year-old dad when a stranger spends Mother's Day lecturing them at a restaurant about him accepting a compliment: ‘I told her that my dad [is] both a mother and father to me’

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• What followed was a woman so committed to correcting a minor social pleasantry that she scooted across a booth to relitigate it with a teenager while her husband was away from the table. Not content to simply disagree internally, or even to make her point once, she repeated the same argument multiple times to someone who was actively trying to read a menu. Then she asked that teenager to make her elderly father apologize for accepting a compliment. For being wished well. On a Sunday.

• AITA for telling a stranger I don’t have a mother after she complained about my dad on Mother’s Day?

  throwawyforranting

  I (19) and my dad (70) decided to go out to eat, it is Mother’s Day but we weren’t exactly going out to celebrate or something like that just eat out.

• When we got to the restaurant we were seated in one of those big booth couches that have several tables across them, we were seated next to a couple (40-50s) and the gentleman on that table said congratulations to my dad.

• Neither I nor my dad thought much of it, and we both said thanks. Well the lady on that table got very angry at her husband and started speaking very loudly that he shouldn’t be congratulating us as clearly there wasn’t a mother with us, her husband just said he was trying to be nice and it was just a courtesy.

• Well a bit later her husband left their table and this lady scoot over close to me and the conversation went a bit like this

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  Woman embracing an older man with her eyes closed indoors.

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• Her: What do you think? Cus you’re clearly his daughter or granddaughter

• Me: oh right I’m his daughter actually

• Her: yeah well he shouldn’t be accepting congratulations it’s not his day, Mother’s Day not father’s days.

• I didn’t answer, and my father wasn’t really catching up what she was saying but she kept going over the same argument again and again. Just gave her an awkward smile and tried to get back at reading the menu to my dad. And then she told me I should make my dad apologize to her since it wasn’t his day. I turned back to her and told her that I don’t have a mother, and that my dad should be proud not ashamed of being both a mother and father to me.

• She mumbled something and went back to her table. they did ended up leaving soon after, she did say some snarky remarks about how impolite I was and that I had ruined her Mother’s Day.

• I talked about this with a friend and was told we both were out of line, that I should’ve just told her to mind her own business and not made her feel bad. And that the congratulation was uncalled for. Idk, I did answer without thinking too much of it, just wanted to enjoy eating out with my dad

  throwawyforranting

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  via Jay Alexander

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• Warm_5103

  She had too many Mother's Day mimosas and let her issues out on you. Seriously, NTA

• The response she got was not calculated or rehearsed. It was just honest. My dad raised me alone because I do not have a mother. He is both. That is not a weapon aimed at anyone's feelings, it is just the truth of the situation, delivered to someone who kept pushing until she found out what the situation actually was.

• the-mirrors-truth

  NTA 

  First off, you're not responsible for some busy body's feelings. She meddled in something that was none of her business to begin with and if she got upset that is of her own doing.

  We often congratulate women for pulling double duty of both mother and father why wouldn't we do so for the fathers?

  mother-of-dragons13

  'We often congratulate women for pulling double duty of both mother and father why wouldn't we do so for the fathers?'

  This here. Mrs Nosey should have just minded her own business. Mr (not) Nosey is right. OP'S dad is doing both jobs and should get credit for being everything for his daughter

• Somehow, this counted as ruining her Mother's Day. A woman who inserted herself into a stranger's meal, demanded an apology from a 70-year-old man for being complimented, and kept going after being ignored multiple times, left the restaurant feeling wronged by the person she cornered.

• Anonymous4344

  NTA how miserable this woman must be to try and ruin someone else's meal.

• The friend's verdict that both parties were out of line is the kind of diplomatic assessment that sounds balanced until you actually look at what each person did. One person answered a question honestly after being pestered repeatedly. The other one made a stranger's lunch her personal grievance project and then complained about the outcome.

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  Young woman and older man smiling together indoors with their arms around each other.

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