We’ve all been caught in the middle of family jokes that are just barely funny and just plain annoying. One guy’s sister-in-law liked to pick on his name for months. It began as a harmless joke but turned into constant teasing, and he decided enough was enough.
He talked about what happened.
We’re 32 years old now and have been together since we were 19. After a year of dating, I met her family. In fact, SIL was the first. The first time we met, she told everyone that my name is Skye, which is a girl’s name. They laughed about it. She was making me laugh, so my wife told her to shut up. Back then, it didn’t bother me at all. There are a lot of male Skyes out there, including my great-grandfather, who is part of my name. I just laughed and told her that. This name comes from my great-grandfather Schuyler, who always went by Sky, and Sky Masterson from Guys and Dolls.
It wasn’t a big deal the first time. When people asked me if I thought my name was more of a girl’s name than a boy’s name, I never cared.
As we were getting ready to have babies, SIL made a lot of jokes about my name and the names of our children. Even though it was annoying, I was able to ignore it. If her sister went too far, my wife would cut her off and tell her to leave, but that only happened once back then.
After getting engaged last year, she was around more and seemed to have calmed down a lot. We hadn’t seen her much for a while. And now she’s having a girl, and boy is she putting my patience to the test.
Her husband first asked her what she thought about giving their daughter the name Skye. She laughed and said they couldn’t use the name because she didn’t want me to feel even more like a girl than I do now. We left after my wife told her to grow up. When we saw her again, they told us that Skye was the name they had chosen. Cool, I said. SIL was shocked that I was okay with letting a girl use my name. I told SIL that her daughter wouldn’t be the first girl or woman to share the same name. I wasn’t worried about being a man, and I didn’t see a problem with girls or women doing the same.
The next time we saw them, they were making a joke about putting both Skyes in pretty pink dresses when her daughter is born. For the rest of her visit, we didn’t get in her way. Then she made fun of the fact that I was taking my middle name instead of my given name because one of my uncles, who always called me by my middle name, was visiting and she heard him do it. That kind of thing happened again, and then on Saturday, we went back to my in-laws’ house for my mother-in-law’s birthday. SIL was making fun of my name with some of my mother-in-law’s siblings, and she tried to include me by calling me over to tell her stupid jokes.
I finally had enough and asked her why she had to be so annoying. I told her how annoying it is to always hear her stupid jokes, which aren’t even jokes as she says they are; they’re insults. I told her that she was the one person who hadn’t taken my name off their mind in over ten years. She thinks Skye is a girl’s name, but she’s not funny, I told her. SIL was mad. She needs to listen to us and grow up, my wife told her. She was going to be a mom soon.
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