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BLOGS POLITICAL
BLOGS FAVORITES |
Thanksgiving is hard work. Since becoming a homeowner two years ago, my house has become Thanksgiving central; the gathering place for family, extended family and friends. I spent last weekend scrubbing, dusting, vacuuming and washing everything in my house. My sister and her husband hauls their family up from Southern California every year, driving through the night to avoid the holiday rush. They have three daughters, an 8 year-old and 5 year-old twins. Thanksgiving is patience. My sister's twins are a handful. And she lets them run riot... which puts me in a shitty position. I have to be disciplinarian when they visit. This is not a role I want to play. I want to be the nice uncle, who showers them with gifts. I want them to look forward to visiting each year. Instead, I'm telling them to stop running and keep your voices down and clean up your mess. This year, one of them really pissed me off. One of the twins wrote on my wall with lip gloss on Thanksgiving. Three walls to be exact. Her parents lectured her for twenty minutes. Then they took her to see a movie and bought her candy. She returned from the movie obivious to the fact that I was pissed off. That is not punishment; that is bullshit. My sister says she spanks her kids when they cross the line. Now, I personally have no opinion of corporal punishment one way or another. (Our dad spanked us when we were kids and we don't suffer any mental scars.) I am not endorsing spanking, but if my sister is a spanker, one would think that writing on your host's walls would be an occasion for a spanking. But no; instead, her kid gets to go see "Christmas with the Kranks" (some would argue that the child has suffered enough from seeing the movie). The offending lip gloss was a gift from my wife to my niece. Upon learning of this fact, my sister said, "Oh, so it's your fault she even had the lip gloss." This only pissed me off further. Was she actually suggesting that it was my wife's fault that her undisciplined daughter wrote on 3 of 4 walls with lip gloss? She was. And that's my sister all over. Wrapped up in her own little world; totally self-involved. She never listens; she only waits for her turn to speak. Lest you think I'm some sort of curmudgeon, you should know that last year, these same nieces ruined our dining room rug. we said nothing. Because it was an accident. In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that my brother-in-law spent all-day Friday repainting the three spots his daughter defaced. The issue here is not the stains themselves, but the totally lack of disipline or punishment for a highly offensive act. Ah, Thanksgiving. I'm thankful it only comes once a year. I'll keep my politics talk brief this post. There's been a lot of bullshit on how this election was lost on "moral" issues. If by "moral" you mean gay rights and women's right to choose, then I guess I'll have to live with loss because you can't compromise on people's basic rights.
©2004 Ron Lim unless noted |
2004 2003 2002 OLDER ON
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