dpsobe@cs.wm.edu
So, let me end the theme with a little tale for you all... gather round, for this is one of only two tales that I actually sit down and tell, and it will answer for you the question about family.
It was my junior year of high school.... as it began, we had the traditional party for my Dad and I, as our birthdays are Sept 3 and 5, respectively, and we always had a family thing together.
Things seemed to go fine, but as the party was wrapping up, Mom said that she had to go and wouldn't be back until the next day. Dad said that was fine, and asked what it was she had to go to. She said that her mother wasn't doing as well, and needed her to come down.
This began a trend... for the first half of the year, Mom started having to travel a lot, visiting her mother down in Virginia (we lived in Maryland at the time). And, at the same time, Mom started complaining about their marriage, and wanted Dad to see a counselor about it. Dad did, and went to therapy alot.
Well, Mom began to withdraw more and more, and by the beginning of the second semester, she had moved into her own room. Dad believed that he was the cause of the relationship's problems, as that is what Mom had told him, and he read all those self help books about fixing relationships and stuff.
Then, towards the mid of the semester, Mom announced she was moving out at the end of the school year (she was a teacher at my high school) and would be moving in with her mother. She offered my little brother and I the option of leaving with her.
At the same time, one night she called the police on Dad, accusing him of abusing her. Well, for anyone that knows my Dad, he's the biggest teddy bear around, and would never lay a finger on her, but she had the cops out there anyway, and she was accusing him of throwing things at her. The cops didn't believe her, and nothing happened with it.
I sat down and talked with Mom about her moving out, and asked her what her plans were. She said she couldn't discuss them, but that everything would be taken care of. I asked what she would do about my college, and she gave the same answer. I asked about high school for my senior year, and she gave the same answer.
When pressed for anything, she gave the same answer. I then told her that I couldn't make a decision based on nothing, and since Dad had agreed to let me stay at the high school I went to, and that he would help me with college, I was going to stay with him.
Mom moved out the last day of classes my junior year. She had packed all her belongings in the car, taught that day, and left with my little brother (who had decided to go with her), after school. It was the single most humiliating day of my life... Friends kept asking why our car was loaded down, and I had to reply that "my mom is moving out today."
Well, she left. I saw her again once after she left, for dinner one night. Mom had a nasty habit of telling me how to do things all the time, and when she did it at that dinner, and my little brother started chiming in with it, I got up and left. Left right after they had taken my order.
About a month later, Dad and I were having dinner and watching TV, when the phone rang. Dad answered, and called me over to the phone after a minute. He kept whispering "it's her! it's her!"... I didn't understand until he got off the phone.
Dad explained that it was a woman named Faye. I was like, who? Dad went on that Faye is the wife of the man who Mom was sleeping with!! They had been having an affair for a year or so at that point, and Faye had photographic proof of the relationship.
Gross.
Dad met Faye about 2 weeks later. I didn't go. He came back and explained, with a slightly disgusted expression, that he had seen the evidence, and the hotel receipts, and the phone bills, and that Mom had been having an affair with Faye's husband, who had moved out March of that year.
I was pretty disgusted myself, at that point.
Dad and Faye started working together, and shared evidence in their respective divorce pursuits. Well, they ended up spending a lot of time together... Fell in love ... and were married after my freshman year of college.
Still happily married.
And Mom moved in with her lover about my freshman year, and they're still living together.
And I haven't spoken to Mom, except to yell at her once, since that dinner.
So there you go.... Gives you an idea. The person I've always gotten along with best is Dad... We've been through a lot together, and I know I can rely on him.
And the person I get along with worst... is Mom. I really can't stand her. And that's why I haven't spoken to her in so many years.
-- DJDave
dpsobe@cs.wm.edu
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