Family

- RANT ALERT -

Back to PorPor's house for first day.

First day is very important for CNY..... You either visit your elders, or if you ARE the elder, you get visited. At any rate, went back in the evening with the parents and got there to discover the dreaded auntie was also goign to come.

Dreaded Auntie is a menace. My mom related one year when DA visited with her kids in tow, AND her 3 filipino maids AND her BF. She doesn't give angpows to anyone's kids but expects peopel to give them to her kids. This year, she called before she came and was told to come later in the evening. But she showed up 5 minutes later just in time for dinner anyways. She and her 4 children.

PorPor is a saintly grandma and I've never seen her ornery. This time, she kept on snatching the choice dishes she's prepared for my mom (mom can't eat a lot of things) and made sure they weren't placed in front of DA. I had the great misfortune of sitting next to DA at table and she kept ordering me around as if I were one of her own kids. And no, she didn't even know my name. She had to ask mom.

Worse! Everytime she asked me to do something for her (get a spare bowl, place a chair, etcetcetc) she'd grab on to my arms and cling like a fucking limpet.

Holy shit, I got up and went to eat in front of the TV.

Even funnier, more relatives arrived after dinner... me and 2 cousins sat in one of the bedrooms watching TV. The boy's dad kept on asking "have they gone yet?" No neeed to ask who THEY were.

Apparently DA comes from really rotten background.... her mom and her grandma were prostitutes. Which in itself is.... well, a fact of life. But they also inherited all the worse things. Not Brought Up Well. A fact I did not know until mom and I sat together for the bus ride home.

DA's 2 own daughter's had shotgun weddings at 17 each. There was more. Arrogance. Bragging. Expecting to be given all the bounty that falls from PorPor's house. And all for free. Right down to her eldest son who sat at table, already squashed with so many unexpected visitors, but who chose to put his leg up on the chair next to him anyways. At dinner!

I didn't know whether to be sorry for DA or to allow the distate to linger.

Then I came to the conclusion : you can blame your circumstances all you want, but each individual has the ability to choose. You can choose to use your background as an excuse for the greediness and coarseness that comes forth. You can choose to be a user. Or you can choose to educate your children well in terms of morals, ethics and basic civil courtesy.


Me? I chose to keep the scorn.