Bad Moms

Donovan Sharpe details a situation where his mother made some poor decisions and essentially price gouged him. In summary, he was needing to live with her until he got back on his feet. She started by charging him $300 per month in rent. As he got raises due to exceptional performance at work, she forced him to pay more - eventually raising the rent to over $1000 per month!

This reminds me of a situation I once found myself in. After graduating college and getting married, my plan was to move to my dad's farm near Jackson, TN. Nobody was living in the house at the time. My mom had lived in that house at one point, but had moved back to Chattanooga after my sister graduated High School. My dad and I had reached an arrangement for rent.

Over the weeks leading up to the wedding, I made a couple of trips to the farm house and moved some extra belongings into the house. There was some preliminary drama - and that should have been my red flag! She goes over to the farm house, and calls me to tell me she is going to discard some stuff in the attic area. Since most of it was my belongings, I told her not to discard any of it - I would clean it out when I moved in.

She insisted and acted like she didn't know what was what - which was a legit excuse with her as she paid absolutely ZERO attention to any detail. I made an extra trip to go over and retrieve my things. Had to use a truck and pay extra in gas, and I was very upset about that.

As Donovan Sharpe said in the video - my mom made incredibly selfish decisions at the most critical points in our lives.

After I move my things out, she leaves the house again. I plan to change locks when I move in after the wedding and the honeymoon. That plan went up in flames. We get back to Chattanooga from the honeymoon, and my mom is not there. She is in West Tennessee at the farm house. I confirm with my dad that he hasn't given her permission to be there, and I do have permission as I'll be paying rent.

The plan changes - now I plan to be at the farm house only a few months while we save for a rent deposit.

We go to West Tennessee with our most basic things. She is there. It was late in the day and we had little choice - we stayed there as did she. The next day, we were out looking for jobs. The market there was much better than was the job market in Chattanooga in 1998. Within three days, we had both found gainful employment. For those days, we stayed in a cheap motel.

We rented an apartment before the week's end. I instructed my dad and family not to tell her where we were - I knew she would try to show up there and "force us out." She was very strange like that. More on this next week...