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You want to scream into the telephone: "I don't want to spend a bunch of money on gas to get to a place where a bunch of people who barely know me will act superior all night." Unfortunately, if your grandmother is anything like mine, she will get all sad and make you feel terrible if you say this. My grandmother is always in a bad mood at family gatherings, and yet she feels obliged to coerce me into coming and feeling rotten too. I did not have an especially bad childhood. I am sorry that I failed to grow up into who my relatives wanted. However, I like the way I live and I never feel like getting flack from people who would be scandalized if I ever spoke to them the way they speak to me. So here are some ways to get out of the whole bad scene:
- Take classes that have big term papers due immediately after November break.
- Accept job assignments for holiday weekends.
- Swap spit with hot guys and chicks who have the flu.
- Run your car into something big right before the event.
- Dye your hair blue, pierce your eyelid, and get a tattoo of your boyfriend's sexual organs on
your nose. Maybe they will be too horrified to invite you back next time.
- Bring a same sex lover as your date and pray to be disowned by your less-than-enlightened
relatives. Maybe they will be too horrified to invite you back next time.
- When invited (or reprimanded for not calling back until after the event), ask "What holiday?
Fine dining in remembrance of my ancesters who committed genicide so I could live in
America today? I will not celebrate a Holocaust!"
- Move to another country. (This worked well for my parents. I'm not making this up.)
- If you were smart, you would lie, but you probably won't.
- The truth -- tell your grandmother: "Because I like seeing you without the rest of the family, but I hate these big events. Everyone is totally rude and it's not like they'll miss me. Yes, that fucking well is true. I'll say fuck if I want to. Oh yeah, is it time to pick on my career choices now? Oh yeah . . ."
Or if you just can't handle another #10, you could go to the damn event and suffer through it on your best behavior. So your Maserati-driving uncle will tell your significant other he should not have eaten all six of those shrimp. So your Pro-Life aunt will try to get you drunk before engaging you in debate. So your stringy-haired, unhygienic cousin (the one with the warts) will tell you that you look like you've put on weight. So you'll promise yourself that by next year you will have thought of a decent way to get out of it.
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