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My [Retired] Mum Picked a Fight With Me Over $30 Yesterday. I Felt My Blood Boiling.

Yeah, yeah! Light me on FIRE!

Aldric Chen
Change Your Mind Change Your Life
5 min readJan 17, 2025

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A senior posing for a camera shot.
Quarrel over $30… ? Photo by Christian Buehner on Unsplash

Mum returned from a cruise with her friends yesterday.

She texted, I replied, and before I knew it, I was at the ferry terminal waiting for her cruise ship to dock. Mum and her friends took another 45 minutes to disembark.

My 67-year-old walked to me in a huff. Mum was in a bad mood.

Apparently, her friends yakked too much. She got a headache after the first day of non-stop talking. The ship deck was cold. She didn’t bring any outer layers. The food was forgettable.

I hugged Mum and grabbed her luggage.

“Where are you walking to? The bus stop is over there?”

I sighed.

The battle of $30

I sighed before I turned around to speak to Mum.

I knew what was coming. And I don’t like it. We could quarrel all day.

“Mum, you have 2 luggage bags and 1 hand carry. The taxi stand is over there. Come, let’s go.”

My taichi-trained Mum flew to my right and grabbed her bags.

“Taxi? No! Do you know how much I paid to get here from our house 5 days ago? I paid

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Change Your Mind Change Your Life
Change Your Mind Change Your Life

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Aldric Chen
Aldric Chen

Written by Aldric Chen

Singaporean. 24x Top Writer (as of June 2023). Eavesdropper. I capture interesting & uncomfortable real-life retirement / work-life stories the way they are.

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