Since it's not gonna snow here anytime soon (last time was...2004? 05? Somewhere there. I forget.) we have a day off for
ice. Everyone is elated, but I'm just sitting here and relaxing, because we're definetely having a make-up day for this. I just hope it's not anytime soon. And that it doesn't cut into Spring Break.
Walter Kase--I was going to talk about him. He wasn't nearly as affecting as I thought he would be, and I didn't really hear anyone around me sobbing loudly (which actually gives the illusion that they're
not a bunch of ridiculously sensitive wusses). However, later in the day I asked my (girl)friends and, yes, they'd found it touching, close to tears, heard people crying, blah blah blah. Well, the auditorium is pretty big and there were two "showings", so I guess that's possible.
His actual speech was heavily accented (I think he said he's Polish) and filled with tears and emotion from himself. I was seated very far from the stage, and couldn't really see his face, but he did say he is 77 years old. I'm sure he has some stuff out on the web, you'll get the gist of it if you read a summary. The presentation was only an hour long, after all, and one reads a lot faster than one speaks.
I've been really bothered lately. My parents just woke up one morning on the wrong side of the bed, most likely. And then, being the lazyass I am, I woke up around noon and heard the last of their shouting, then they feel silent. I thought they were just sulking (which is, probably, more or less accurate) until the barbershop. Afterwards, my dad dyed his own hair. (Premature whites. He's never done that by himself before, always had mom help him. And he did a fairly cruddy job, but that's beside the point.)
So Dad is the quiet, introverted type who gets headaches whenever you talk to him for over an hour. After the barbershop day, though, he was even more so than he was. And Mom appeared to be less affected, still talking to me normally and laughing and all that fake crap.
I thought, at first, that I would let them work it out themselves, like they'd always done, but it's been a week. A whole fucking week, and they haven't even LOOKED at each other.
So I was all, what the hell. I'll talk to mom. Because, as I mentioned earlier, she was maintaining an open facade already. Using it to my advantage would be no problem.
She told me. It's an old animosity with the in-laws. Over the silliest and deadliest of all human possessions: money. They aren't in the best of situations, and we have to send them money regularly. She told me she wanted to send ___ amount of money, and she has 2 parents and a rather large extended family mooching off of them. My dad, on the other hand, only has a mom and his siblings/large, extended family gives money as well. He wanted to send the same amount as Mom.
So my Mom asked why, and inexplicably, he started using really stupid excuses (thousands of dollars of coal!). She didn't buy it, he got mad. They had a pussy-fight.
Both of my parents work, and they both make around the same amount of money. They pool their money, though, for family matters such as this.
I doubt that she really "asked" why; more like "demanded loudly". She also brought up how my dad's parents were verbally cruel to her because of some old village beliefs, and how Dad witnessed it at the time, yet did nothing about it, and when asked, conjured up more stupid excuses (I didn't hear!).
Dragging up something like that...well, it's more like, "Hey, your mom is extremely, rudely partial(which she actually is) to people. So she's a bad person. So she deserves less money anyway, since she's one person and my parents are two people."
I wouldn't have taken that very kindly either, so I don't blame him.
However, I do blame him for probably not listening to her excuses. He isn't very short tempered, rather the opposite, but when it comes to family, he can be protective. I suppose some of that came out.
I have my own theory: that my dad grew up with his mom, and since his mom is so "cruel", he might have felt threatened and maybe...was brainwashed? After all, it's easy to be brainwashed by your parents when you're small. You know that feeling when your parents are telling you to do something, or else. And maybe if he doesn't send her that much money (for her to live in 'luxury', like Mom claims) that she'll start disliking him or something. I know a lot of people feel that way with their parents (well, at least some of my closer friends have told me so). It doesn't seem that likely, unless I
ask him. When I brought it up to my mom, though, she vehemently refused the idea and stated with a fervor that he's going to turn me away, definetely will, and is going to say I'm only a child, I don't understand, etc. I'm regretting asking her in the first place about it, so I got discouraged from asking him. But there's still an overwhelming chance that will happen, in the state he's in (if I know anything about my dad).
A kid...? As if. I understand the situation perfectly, and would have four+ years ago. Their definition of understanding, however, might have been to see it from
their point of view. I believe I'm a bit more open-minded than them right now, and a little more unbiased. I might not have experienced some of it, but that makes only a miniscule difference, and as long as I have heard it, I can process it perfectly.
So my mind is stuck in a rut, spinning around on a broken record. Hate? Nope. Animosity? Hardly. Divorce? Been threatened with it so many times before, I can't count.
No, it's the tension that kills me.
I hate this.
mood:  stressed music: Remedy--Seether |
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bean_langdon's journal
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