The capstone of a not-great week last week was — you guessed it — having to deal with a family gathering brought down by the adult equivalent to schoolyard bullying.
It started when I mentioned my really my really cool Wren fountain pen to the family. My mother was impressed with how well it wrote and the ingenious design. My father was intrigued by how it worked. One aunt in attendance agreed that there is nothing like having a nice pen for writing with. The other aunt…
”You know what you are? A nerd. A nerd in need of a pocket protector for his ‘special little pen’. You paid how much for that? Sounds like you got ripped off and should have bought a pack of Bic ballpoint pens and saved your money.”
I laughed it off, saying I normally wore t-shirts and pocket tees are not really in fashion anymore. She scowled at my deflection. Her comment was unnecessary and intended to be cruel, and the barbs took a bit of flesh, but failed to find purchase as far as she could see.
This has been going on for years, even before one of my other aunts passed away — the one usually the playground bully at family gatherings. I thought we’d be done with that when she passed away, but no.
I don’t know what has gotten into this aunt. It started about the time she was convinced that I had sold off some valuables from my grandfather’s house that I was living in at the time he had passed away. There were no valuables to steal, not that I looked very hard. But both her and her then-husband were in need of cash to supply their crack and/or cocaine habit at the time. The also accused me of stealing in a separate instance, until my firmly father reminded him he was not listed as a benefactor of the estate when I complained about his regular cornering me to ask where I hid “the loot”).
Since then, she insults me whenever she gets her ire up. Her ire was up yesterday afternoon.
Someone carries a 30-year grudge that was never justified in the first place. I won’t miss them when they are gone.
So, there you go folks. A rare explanation for yesterday’s post.
14 responses to “Aftermath”
My late husband wanted to market a wall plaque that said, “Families Suck.” I wish he had gone through with it–we would have been millionaires.
LOL. Yeah, sometimes I wonder if it shouldn’t come out into the daylight that people might be related but that doesn’t mean they have to like each other.
Familial bullies are an interesting phenomenon. When I was a kid I had some great uncles who took great delight in taunting me because I wasn’t in the army, you know when I was 10, and explaining how pussies like me killed by their own unit the army. Greatest generation my ass.
Oh yeah. That crowd. I didn’t get that treatment because my older relatives were in special stuff and couldn’t talk about it. So we never got the talks.
But I had neighborhood kids I know who got that third degree and paid it forward to the rest of us.
This is why I’m so glad my mother moved us so far away from her toxic family. I remember at my wedding thinking “am I really related to these people?” I happen to love pens and wish I could have got a demo!
It was just a weird interaction overall. I was like “Really? That’s the best you could come up with? You realize that people have called me that for the past 50+ years? It’s just petty at this point.”
Also, totally thought that poem was about Trump 😭
It could have been. 🤷♂️
Me too! 🙂
Families. Don’t you just love them? I thought this was just ‘bitter old aunt’ syndrome, until you mentioned an ex-husband and a Class A drug habit. Sounds like she’s in no position to throw stones. Avoid if possible in future; why put yourself through it? 🙁
One word: Mother.
She likes to imagine the weekly family gatherings growing up were fun. They weren’t.
I get it. My late mother-in-law was like that, insisted on getting everyone together, even though they didn’t want to be – and as a married-in extra I got included. Such joy. 😐
Yep. Everyone is invited, even those who would rather stay home.
🙄🙄🙄