![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Oct. 9th, 2019 01:22 pm
Petty 4 Life
Although I'm striving to be more kind and forgiving, I'm still capable of remarkable pettiness when provoked.
I have relatives in Kansas who are Traditionalist Catholics. My last real contact with any of them was over thirty years ago when my family was making a trip out west. A conversation with the patriarch of the family, who we'll call Evil Uncle Tom, ended with him denying the Holocaust. (I vividly remember my disgust at hearing him insist, "There weren't that many Jews in Germany!")
Some years later, one of the cousins got married. My aunt sent my father a wedding invitation which included my siblings but omitted me (it was a few years after I'd come out as gay) and my stepmother (who married my father without him having his previous marriage annulled). My dad sent it back, so she resent it to my mother, who of course turned around and told my dad.
Dad was furious, of course; the rest of us just laughed at her foolishness. Some years later, when my younger brother got married, she refused to bring out our grandmother, who was living with her at the time, claiming that Grandma didn't want to go if they weren't having a church wedding. Dad called her bluff, saying he'd drive all the way to Kansas himself to retrieve her, so she came after all--but refused to attend the ceremony itself or let Grandma attend either. To rub it in, she parked Grandma's wheelchair opposite the exit and stood there with her; I'll always remember her smug face as we left the venue. Needless to say, I avoided her for the rest of the reception.
She died last month and not only my dad and his wife but my mom and my sister drove out for the funeral. That probably had something to do with why two of my cousins and EUT came to my brother's memorial. At one point during the reception, it looked like EUT was approaching me to offer condolences, so I pointedly walked across the room to his daughter and began chatting with her. She later said to me, "Dad was trying to talk to you but you must have seen him." No, I saw him. I just don't have the time of day for homophobic Nazis.
(She and I are now friends on Facebook, which could get interesting. Already she's posted a link to a petition condemning a woman for respecting the gender of her trans child. I politely commented that it was pointless to sign such a petition and that the father's claims of mistreatment weren't substantiated by court documents.)
I have relatives in Kansas who are Traditionalist Catholics. My last real contact with any of them was over thirty years ago when my family was making a trip out west. A conversation with the patriarch of the family, who we'll call Evil Uncle Tom, ended with him denying the Holocaust. (I vividly remember my disgust at hearing him insist, "There weren't that many Jews in Germany!")
Some years later, one of the cousins got married. My aunt sent my father a wedding invitation which included my siblings but omitted me (it was a few years after I'd come out as gay) and my stepmother (who married my father without him having his previous marriage annulled). My dad sent it back, so she resent it to my mother, who of course turned around and told my dad.
Dad was furious, of course; the rest of us just laughed at her foolishness. Some years later, when my younger brother got married, she refused to bring out our grandmother, who was living with her at the time, claiming that Grandma didn't want to go if they weren't having a church wedding. Dad called her bluff, saying he'd drive all the way to Kansas himself to retrieve her, so she came after all--but refused to attend the ceremony itself or let Grandma attend either. To rub it in, she parked Grandma's wheelchair opposite the exit and stood there with her; I'll always remember her smug face as we left the venue. Needless to say, I avoided her for the rest of the reception.
She died last month and not only my dad and his wife but my mom and my sister drove out for the funeral. That probably had something to do with why two of my cousins and EUT came to my brother's memorial. At one point during the reception, it looked like EUT was approaching me to offer condolences, so I pointedly walked across the room to his daughter and began chatting with her. She later said to me, "Dad was trying to talk to you but you must have seen him." No, I saw him. I just don't have the time of day for homophobic Nazis.
(She and I are now friends on Facebook, which could get interesting. Already she's posted a link to a petition condemning a woman for respecting the gender of her trans child. I politely commented that it was pointless to sign such a petition and that the father's claims of mistreatment weren't substantiated by court documents.)