Posted by:
dogzilla
(
)
Date: November 09, 2010 12:03PM
I think it's just a controlling thingy.
About five years ago, I went out to Arizona for a little family vacay. I met my nevermo sister, her 2nd husband, and her two kids, and my nevermo mom and her BFF. No mormons were on this trip! They flew out from Ohio; I flew out from Florida.
We were there for my neice's gymnastics meet. We stayed a few extra days to go up to the Grand Canyon because none of us knew if we'd ever have the chance to see the GC ever again and if you're that close... might as well spend an extra couple days checking out one of the great wonders of this country, right?
So the last day of the meet was a Saturday. We were done by 4 p.m. and had the rest of Saturday and all of Sunday to explore the GC. Monday everyone was flying back home. Well. It happened to also be Superbowl Sunday. I do not care one whit about football, the Superbowl, nor my BIL's beloved Pittsburgh Steelers. (I am a Cleveland Browns fan.) My sister sent me an email the week before we all left, TELLING me that, after the meet, we were ALL going to hang around the hotel to watch the game.
I have a DVR, don't care that much about the Superbowl, and was only a few hours away from the GC. I saw no reason to sit there in some crappy hotel room eating crappy junk food watching some stupid football game. Not when the GC was a fairly short drive away and I could have that many more hours exploring.
I told my sister that I wanted nothing to do with the football game and that I would take mom and her friend up to the GC. I suggested that my sister and her family meet us up there on Sunday afternoon. She was very upset. She wanted us to all do the same thing. Her husband was all about the game and did not care about anyone else's needs or desires. They wanted to control the choices for the rest of us. She was very mad at me for not rolling over and letting her and her DH dictate my vacation agenda.
Now, our dad is a TBM, but one thing I adore and respect about him, to the core, is that he will NOT allow himself to be led along like a sheep if he is not buying in 100% himself. Same guy told me to not marry before age 25 so I'd have time to figure out who I am and what I want in life before the responsibilities of marriage and children. Pretty good advice for a brainwashed mormon, eh? I've seen my dad walk away from what "the crowd" is doing, take some heat for it, and go do his own thing. So I was fully prepared to take the heat for not going along with the Superbowl Agenda.
There was some tension at first when we all met up at the airport, but it went away after my sister realized that I wasn't going to try to control what they did and I wasn't mad or upset or anything. I just wasn't going to be told what to do by her controlling husband. (You let your man control you, if you want to, but he ain't going to tell me what to do!)
We all got along just fine and everyone got over it before the first meal was finished. We were all adults (mostly -- the kids were teenagers) and everyone quickly became respectful that we each had different ideas about what would be fun. In the spirit of compromise, my DS and BIL offered to go to a museum with me because they know I'm into art. They'd have been bored out of their skulls, but they were trying to find something that would be especially enjoyable to ME, but which we could all do together. For the most part, we all sort of stuck together and I blew off the museum suggestion because my nephew wanted to go see or do something and that seemed like it would be a little bit more enjoyable for everyone.
Adults compromise. Controllers do not.