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The original was posted on /r/AmItheAsshole by /u/Thr0waway_parentvent on 2023-09-16 08:25:23.

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This happened a while ago but I’m still getting some heat for it so I need to know if I overreacted and I am in fact The AH, or whether it was a justified response at the time.

I (43F) don’t have a great relationship with my mother (68F), but most of the time we get along okay when I do see her (but are not particularly close). There is one thing in particular she does that really bugs me to the point of me seeing red every time, and that’s her insistence on picking at the food on my plate whenever we dine out. She also does it whenever I buy take-out, and the routine is as follows;

I inform her I am buying take out, and ask her if she wants any herself. She usually responds with disgust, saying it’s junk food and she doesn’t know how I can eat that revolting muck. Then the food arrives and she gives it the side eye until she decides she would like to ‘just have a small taste’, and before you know it she has eaten half of the meal.

Her routine at cafes and restaurants is this;

The food arrives and she makes some kind of passive aggressive comment such as “Wow, look at the SIZE of that meal”, or " Got enough food on your plate there?", or she will puff her cheeks to imitate an overweight person ( I try to ignore all of this ). Then not long after she ‘just wants a small taste’ and then the picking off my plate begins despite her having her own order in front of her, and despite me offering to leave her something to try at the end.

This has been going on literally for over 2 decades.

Her grandchildren know not to leave their plates unattended for even a few minutes because she will polish it off and say " Oh I thought you were finished". They know if they want to enjoy a takeaway treat to not bring the food into her house. I once saw her battle a 4 year old for a cheeseburger, they both had a death grip on the burger and were going red in the face. It was bizarre.

The incident in question in which I may have been the AH, was a large family gathering at a local restaurant, with uncles and aunts and children present, so yeah there were a lot of witnesses to the one time I lost my shit and snapped when she started reaching for my plate. On her first attempt I said calmly " Don’t do that, you know how much it annoys me." Then on her second attempt I went from 0 to 100 in half a second and looked her dead in the eye and said very forcefully " Don’t you DARE touch that F***ING CHIP !!!" It was loud enough that half the table heard it and they all looked up to see me glaring and her with her hand frozen in mid air and her mouth wide open in shock. Honestly I don’t know why she was that surprised because I had told her multiple times that I hated her picking at my food…but this was the first time I had raised my voice and dropped the F bomb. With a table of family to witness.

It’s been ages but every now and again it gets brought up ‘that time you abused your mother at the restaurant over a chip’. So did I go to far? AITA?