Three scenarios that are even worse than Stalker John and Passive Victim Elly.

You're probably thinking that there couldn't be anything worse than the saga of the Pattersons being the end result of predatory sexuality. Sadly, I, along with babsbybend and regnad_kcin, can imagine two scenarios that are far worse than JSTF getting happy with the nitrous and then blackmailing SheetShaver into submission. Both come into play exactly twenty-five years ago. We see them as a reasonably content young married couple putting their children to bed. They have debts to pay and some tension about the wife's desire to help shoulder the burden but nothing they can't work out. They start to wax nostalgic about how they first met. Here's where the awful part comes in. Awful, terrible concept number one is that they've been so busy living their lives, they don't quite remember how exactly they found one another and, worse yet, stay in the dark. Simple as anything, they just sort of drifted into each others arms and they themselves will never quite recall how. Realizing the what you thought was a grand romance is the result of inertia is pretty bad. It would be even worse if, of course, Elly said something like "What party did YOU go to? I wasn't there, green isn't my color anyway and I never wore skirts that short in my life." only to have John mutter "Oh, my." while wondering if she got him confused with some guy named Johnston he knew. After all, he and this 'Rod' character could almost be twins to the inattentive. Having your marriage based on mistaken identity is slightly worse than either not knowing how or one partner being bullshitted, right? The worst scenario of all is that they have to spend their declining years having to disprove the hash their son made of the real story. Let's assume that the backstory given in Lives behind the Lines is the real one. Telling Michael in the hopes that he would be able to repeat it faithfully after they're gone is more than a little misguided because if something isn't about him, he can't be bothered paying attention. Not only did he ignore key details, he played fill-in-the-blanks in such a manner as to make his parents look worse than they were. The sad thing is that they expected him to be their Official Keeper of the Stories because he's a big time author. Imagine their horror when they have to listen to the garbled mess he made of their early years. Spending their retirement being told his steaming mound of poo is exactly what they told him is a sadly fitting punishment for their years of being crappy parents of female children.