All Comments on 'This Old House - Barbara's Story'

When one paragraph ends with a quotation mark and the very next one starts with a mark, that indicates the character speaking has changed. When one character is speaking and is not uninterrupted by narrative or another character talking, every paragraph starts with a mark, but only the last one has a closing mark.

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Most of this is supposed to be a monologue but you wrote it as a conversation.

Tragic tale of a very selfish mom, wno woke up only after she set off the blast that shook 4 worlds off their foundations.

I understand that this is a sequel, but it's really bloodless -- no emotion, no real heart, almost like a long obituary. I'm really not sure what its purpose is, or what it adds to the previous story, other than to demonstrate that people have different memories and perspectives on things.

that was a sad story.

Not a happy wrap up to a good story. The only good part was the cheating bitch dying of cancer, a whore to the end. It would have been a better story if he had pulled that trigger. Barbara tried to do right by her father, but her original betrayal made it impossible. Just no way to make a happy ending out of this.

This is even sadder than the first story.

Very Meh.

"I need you to go with me" - I've seen this before. The wife who is leaving her husband alone, to be with her lover, SHE needs the daughter! Fuck her husband's needs!

"Barbara, honey," Mom said, "I've met a man at work, and he has asked me to go away and live with him."

Barbara was fourteen, not five. This teenage girl was supposedly best friends with her dad, but she doesn't even complain about the appalling way her mother was betraying her father?

It's a shame she wasn't loyal like a Stangstar daughter. The Mom would have faced a screaming tirade at how much Barbara hated her for betraying her daddy and would never forgive her for destroying their family.

"I couldn't look my father in the eyes and see the hurt."

But that didn't stop Barbara going off on a month's cruise to the Caribbean with mommy and her rich new fuckbuddy. Oh and she didn't say no to the gifts either, like a new Mustang... and an extravagant sweet 16 party... and a speedboat... and skiing in Aspen... and all-expenses paid tuition for college...

"I missed my Dad, and wanted to reconnect with him and my grandparents."

Yeah, when she was eighteen... four fucking years after the divorce! If she actually gave two shits about George, she would have been on the phone to her grandparents every night, crying and begging to be allowed to see her father again. but no...

"I visited my grandparents in Clarksdale, but they let me know that my father never wanted to see me or speak to me ever again."

I originally thought it was harsh that the father disowned his daughter... but Ron basically bought Barbara, just like her whore mother. If it was me, I would have disowned the materialistic little shit as well!

This chapter was even more depressing than the first one, but at least the mercenary whore and her fickle daughter lived miserable lives after betraying George.

In and of itself, it’s too short to be of much interest. It just fills in the few holes left from the first part. I gave the original, sad and dark part, 5-stars. I can’t really score this part. I guess it gets 5-stars since it is an addendum, but by itself...???

So the wife was a guiltless greedy promiscuous company whore, for years, and the husband and daughter never had a clue. The husband had no curiosity nor instinct about his wife's whereabouts, job activities, work associates, not even how much money was stated on her W2. Then one day, Shazam, he comes home and finds out he really married an Aardvark. I mean, how was he supposed to know? Women of such monstrous evil and lack of ethics and morals, well, they just blend right in with all the virtuous average normal women in the family and in the neighborhood.

You know there is this professional ability called psychoanalysis where a person who never met you asks you questions and discusses your life and your values and your habits and your dreams and aspirations, and after a while they can kind of tell whether or not you are a normal human being. You think maybe a spouse who spends 24/7/365 with a person might get a little insight into the true character of the person they married? You would think at least the tail and the snout would give her away, if he bothered to notice. So he got what he married, and he got what he deserved. Sounds like she did too. As for the daughter, . . .

A person 16 years old can become legally emancipated in the state of Florida. And by 18 Barbara needed no legal ruling. She could have contacted her father anytime she had the spirit and determination. Hell, she had her own car by age 16, she could have driven to her father's house and thrown herself on his mercy and forgiveness. Barbara did the same thing her mother did, she sold out. So spare me the remorse and the Crocodile tears. Barbara was just what her mother was, maybe the lite version. Glad they threw the dumb shit husband a few coins to keep him in oatmeal and diapers till the end.

Maybe the grandchildren will rise above the sewage their parents and grand parents wallowed in.

What a cheery light-hearted story. Think I'll go snuggle with the wife and be glad this was just fiction.

Thanks for the effort. It was better than it will be rated.

What was the point of the story. Please why was she meeting the care giver what was the point. She talked only about the memories.. Strange...

This added nothing to the story that needed to be told.

1/5

Care place in Southaven MS is Sunshine manor .

No reason why the girl couldnt cry or tell her dad she wants to stay with him so he knows this is the wifes doing. Girl also knows how to write. Write to him and grandparents. They have phones? Use them. I mean why would the girl ghost dad? Ex wife had a pretty decent life. Travel, sex, parties. All but a sole mate but she readily gave that up.

This follow-up came out of nowhere, IMO, and I wasn't looking forward to reading it... but, after doing so, I can say I was pleasantly surprised about it. Mostly.

The recontextualisation of Caroline's life, after she left George, was greatly appreciated. Learning that her later years were pretty much devoid of genuine love, affection and joy truly warmed my cold, misanthropic heart! She got the lifestyle she always dreamed of having... and all that it cost her was her parents, the only man who truly loved her, and any closest with her daughter for most of Barbara's life. At the end of it all, she ended up an overused slut, which is quite fitting.

'Kinda ridiculous, though, that her kid genuinely thought her mother still loves her dad, after her passing. Maybe you could convince me that Caroline bitterly regrets her actions, realizing too late how good she had it with gullible George, but you couldn't make me believe that this materialist sociopath has any idea of what love is.

That being said, even though I fully enjoyed this part of the sequel, the rest of the story left a lot to be desired. First thing first: just like its predecessor, the finance of some of the characters here still made no sense. I still do not understand how George, a man who had a steady, well paid job throughout most of his life, who had no one to take care of, except himself, for a good 30 years or so, and who didn't drink, gamble, buy hookers or had any expensive hobbies to lose his money into, could ended up so destitute, so penniless, in his last years, that his ex-wife had to step in to help him out. That will never make sense to me... just like it doesn't make sense, in my book, that Ron's daughter, Janice, ended up a prostitute, given that she is the sole survivor of her family, and therefore must have inherited the 40% of his corporation that her mom, Rhonda, got after he drop dead. For some reason, the author wanted to make it clear that the only character, in this whole story, that was ever capable of making good financial decisions was Caroline... No logic whatsoever there.

Finally, the whole structure of this follow- up didn't work. Barbara's confession to Nancy felt forced, not organic, seemingly coming out of nowhere. This would have worked better if she was speaking to, say, a grief counselor or even one of her family members, but to drop such a heavy load of trauma on essentially a stranger made zero sense at all. It especially didn't wok with Nancy not saying a word throughout this whole monologue, and it wasn't surprising to see chas4455 drop any pretense of it, at the very end of his story. This is, IMO, the biggest flaw of this second part.

So some good, some bad... I still appreciated this third perspective, but wish it was set up in a better way. In any case, thanks for the effort, author.

Randy fired accidentally George‘s rifle when cleaning it. The bullet hit Barbara above her left ear and the exit wound went through her right eye, splattering the pictures of her mother and hers from the album in her hands with her brain and blood.

They make big mistakes in life and then live to regret them and die in shame as Caroline did in this story. Her daughter Barbara had to witness the shame in real life and see the devastation to both of her parents. Sad story for George and Barbara and a pathetic story of Caroline who lived the life of a shamed woman looking for glory by being a whore.

tend to be closer to the truth.

it's why marriage is such a raw deal. the ex wife made a supremely selfish decision that wound up hurting a dozen people. she only wanted forgiveness AFTER she personally suffered. what a vile human being.

but they exist, and our corrupted system encourages it. all that corruption has made marriage too toxic. smart men wont touch it. if a man REALLY wants to be a father, it's safer to rent out a womb. It's cheaper too. the propaganda we're always fed is that, 'no one can replace a mother's love'. it's been used to justify horrible court decisions. just yesterday i watched a show where a woman described her parent's divorce. the mom got custody despite being a junkie, left her girls alone with some molester, and later GAVE UP. the mother literally dumped her children on the father's doorstep and ran off. apparently the father was a wonderful parent the entire time, but that woman had serious issues because of that molestation that happened under the mother's and court's 'watchful' eyes.

so until women change the laws to stop benefiting hypergamy, and more towards equity or even equality...never get married. put up, or shut up. in the end, a rented womb costs less than a single 'cheap' wedding. think about that. men make excellent caregivers. they lack the mother's instinct for unbiased love. but men possess something women don't have....a father's tough love. tough love gets you a job. tough love breaks unhealthy habits. and tough love helps create independent adults from small children. i see it all the time. men and women that never grow up, and laze around their parents house...the mother is the sole parental figure. the dad mentally checked out years ago. but any family with a father's presence has active young adults getting ready to leave the nest.

What was the story? Was this just meant as an update? The original story was very well written and complete.

It might have been tough but he would have taken her back into her heart. His life would have been so much better. She was a coward like her mother. The dad was a coward as well. His daughter was a kid, he should have fought to stay in her life. A man never gives up on his kids. Very few to cheer for in this story.

The scary thing about this story is that it has most likely occurred in the past, present, and will in the future. Money, the root of all evil. Money turned a good wife into a cheating slut.

Great story and well written.

It will give you great insight into the mind of someone who gets so worked up over fictional stories. I see a mental health facility in his future.

Four stars because it is well written. I suppose there is some solace in that he was surrounded by his daughter, grand children and niece at the end. However, his life was pretty empty and lonely after his wife and daughter left. While his wife suffered somewhat from her second husband's cheating she still had the lifestyle she wanted and she abandoned George for the rest of his life as far as he knew. I know it's reality but I don't have to like it. It depressed me.

I agree that both the father and/or daughter should have made an attempt to reconnect since they had such a great relationship up to her 14th year when mother/slut decided to chase her dream. The father could have easily reconnected through his in-laws if he managed to get his head out of his ass long enough to realize that his daughter really loved him. I still gave this story and the initial story full marks because it was well written and seemed all too real.

Thank you for reading my stories and leaving thoughtful comments.

Not every story has a happy ending, the hero doesn't ride off into the sunset, and they don't always live happily ever after.

Chas

@CaOldDog, I don't blame the father. At 14, Barbara had to know that her mother didn't need her, she had Ron, while her father, being left alone DID need her, and should have told her mother that she was going to stay with him. And that was WITHOUT their prior closeness.

The first story made it seem as if George flushed his wife and daughter from his life out of anger over their betrayal, but what actually happened was that when they left him he set out to kill the man who had stolen his family from him, only to suffer a mental breakdown at the moment he was about to pull the trigger. That breakdown resulted in a delusion that the wife and daughter had never existed at all, and here we learn his loved ones - including Caroline's own parents - helped reinforce that delusion by keeping them away from him and removing all evidence of their existence so that his fragile psyche would not be shattered a second time. So what we were actually seeing in the first story was George reliving his long repressed memories from 50 years ago as his dementia ate away at his more recent ones.

Not an easy task to add to a story, but this was done quite well. Previous commenter insights were right on the money. *****

That's a great explanation of the story that makes perfect sense. I still wish he had pulled the trigger.

This one is beyond sad. Barbara's perspective was vital to understand how delusional both George and Caroline were. Ron never cheated on Caroline? Thank you, Barbara, for setting the record straight. We can be so kind to ourselves, if only in our own minds, in the face of catastrophically bad choices, and their consequences.

George's suppression of his memories of Caroline and Barbara was more than just a product of his dementia. It was a defense mechanism to help him cope with his new reality and get through each day. Some people are stronger than others in this respect; George was not one of them. Eventually, his overwhelming sorrow turned in on itself. He self-destructed, both physically and mentally.

There but for the grace of God....

Lots of selfish people doing what selfish people do. Living their shitty lives without a single shred of remorse.

Then they whine and moan when the people they shit on don’t want anything to do with them.

She was old enough to realize the shit they were pulling.

He should have pulled up his pants and went on to a better life

What did he think she was doing all those overnights and weekends

jtwheels

Both of these stories/chapters are just plain sad. But I they're more realistic, more true to what might actually happen, than some of the way out revenge BTB stories on this site. Well written, Damn good story.

Everyone wants a life of luxury. That's usually the reason women trade up give. But, Karma has it's ways of teaching its lessons before you exit this plane of existence. Pushing 70 here and I've seen it over and over again happen personally and happen to others. You don't get away with anything in this world. Everything comes back on you. When you cheat, your cheating yourself and those around you. Respect yourself enough to do the right thing and divorce first before you go looking for someone new.

Pointless rambling !

The daughter was only 14 so I give her a pass but the wife got the correct ending, lonely and in pain.

A very sad tale from the husnands POV but at least the daughter and grandkids helped him in his latter years even tho he never knew

JJ

While it was interesting to get the entire story of This Old House out and to see how much of the first chapter was the ex-wife trying to make herself not look like a gold digging whore, the way this story was presented was not good. It's basically just a cold summary of facts as narrated by a robot pretending to be George's daughter. While the first portion of this chapter was a little colored by Barbara's perspective, that didn't last. We got a tiny bit of how she was blind sided by her mom and she told Nancy she was shocked but we got no other real emotional input on it.

"Mom went here. Ron went there. He fucked this girl. Mom fucked these guys. I got married. Mom gave us money. Grandpa told me about Dad." Yaaaaaaaaaaawn. The first chapter also came across as a little dry but it was worlds better than this one. I was hoping for more of Barbara's feelings on things, more of an actual story than a summation of a series of events. How did she react when she realized her mom had no intention of letting her see her dad? What did she do? Did she try to call him? Did she talk to her old friends at home? How did she feel when she turned 18 and discovered her Dad wouldn't see her? How did she finagle her way into being his caretaker and did she ever try to talk to him about things despite his encroaching dementia? All the things that would have made this an actual story instead of a time line.

Like I said, I appreciated finding out all the facts that were left unstated in the first chapter and discovering how many more lies the ex-wife told. I just didn't like how it was presented.

Good story that would have been great if he could have pulled the trigger.

Well, he was loved and cared for though he did not realize it. He should not have shut the daughter out but how was he to know. He did not put a fight when she left.

I see that even 2 years ago that sbrooks had his head up his ass. His failure is the same as many commentors, they don't read for the enjoyment - they speed read to nitpic the story. At the time that the daughter was 14 it would have been the 70's and at that age and time period kids didn't have the exposure to divorce. They largely did what they were told, at least till they got older.

Barbara's mother was a slimy slut. Although not rich, she had a decent life with her first husband. The only thing she did good, was setting up a trust fund to care for him. She suffered greatly, and that was good. Too bad she couldn't have seen her REAL husband again

Nice reporting of Barbara’s viewpoint, but why was she so helpless through all of this? Granted, at 14 her choices were limited. Even if she had insisted on staying with dad, Caroline could have gotten custody. But at 16, why didn’t Barbara drive back home? At that stage of the game, I think George would have taken his daughter back with open arms, understanding that at 14 she was taken prisoner against her will. Wish George could have pulled that trigger! Something about getting brains all over your summer dress that takes the glow off your rich, cheating life!

A well written story of sluts, whores, and sad sacks. So what?