It’s spring, which means time for family visits, graduations, and in general running into people or dealing with people you may not always appreciate having to deal with for hours at a time. While I certainly don’t claim to hate other people, it’s nearly certain I will run into old classmates I never got along with, family members that want to talk about politics constantly (I mean Lord didn’t we have enough of that with extra long election seasons?) or people who will demand that you come up with an answer to something that you don’t give a crap about in the first place. Some of it is bland, but some of it is more vile.
Most of the time, I’m completely baffled and just look, well stupid? I’ll give you an example. Now this one is definitely more bland, but it really caught me off guard. Let’s explain that one of my brothers has a group of close friends and has since high school. I went to college and moved around and quite frankly have different friends. But my family is really attached to all these guys. Whatever, right? There was a comment about one of their ex-wives (this guy has been married 3 times), she got remarried and has a newborn. It was demanded if I was friends on Facebook with her. I was completely baffled. I have been for ages, while we were never friends, it’s always nice to see old acquaintances and their spouses, new babies, etc. We came from a very small school, so you knew pretty much everyone, and well, that’s what Facebook is for, right? I’m guessing there’s a lot of animosity towards this girl, and some snide comments were made about her dropping off her newborn with the ex or something with the other kids. She had one kid when they got married, and they had one together, so this guy was a dad to both kids for quite some time. If she’s asked him to watch both her kids before, I don’t really see an issue with it. While one was not technically his, he did act as father to him for a number of years. I would imagine the kid would feel abandoned otherwise (esp. since his OWN dad is not in the picture at all- make sense?) so I’m not really certain what the issue is, but I was just lost as to what to say. Sure, why not be Facebook friends with her? She’s never done anything to me, and what goes on between her and her ex-husband is really their business, not anyone else’s. If he chooses to tell tales to all his friends and spread gossip about their lives, well so be it. It’s so far removed from us though, I mean how are we supposed to know all that type of ‘inner’ gossip much less give a crap about it? They’re both seemingly happily remarried, so… yeah. To add to this hilarity is the fact that this sounds a lot like how my other brother and his ex-wife are. She has watched his 2nd wife’s kids along with ‘theirs’ in a pinch, and everyone thought THAT was great. So… I just don’t get it.
But I have NO idea what to say to these things. Or when people seem disappointed that I’m a SAHM when I was top in my class. So what. I had a good memory, I graduated college (and paid for it all myself, thank you very much), and worked my butt off to be able to stay home. It works for us. I feel blessed. But seeing all the have-it-alls tends to make me feel like they THINK I’m less, whether I am or not. I try not to let it bother me…but I just feel so unprepared.
So come on internets, help a girl out. I need some good one-liners and snappy comebacks to awkward questions. HELP!!!
I hate that. I’ve been in my fair share of those same kinds of gatherings and I always think up snappy come-backs…. about a week later.
SAHM comments are almost always snide. I don’t know why. I would have LOVED to have been able to stay home with Zach when he was little (or stay home with him now in the summers) and always felt a little jealous of the women who could – not that I’d ever let on. Some people HAVE to though. I’d just say that you feel blessed to be able to be home with the girls while they’re little and that the future will take care of itself.
As for the family drama, just say that you don’t know anything about that and don’t want to.
I avoid personal things that stress me out. I have enough in my life that stresses me – I don’t need anyone else’s crap on top of my own. That includes the news. I don’t watch the news or read the news. There is nothing I can do about it, but I found that it was stressing me out big-time, so I quit. I can’t tell you how much happier I am since I began my news fast.
Good luck with all of that. It’s not easy.