Hypocrisy sucks. But....it usually begins in the home. If you say that neither you nor your family members have ever been hypocrites, you're full of shit.
I'm going to point out a few shining examples of this today: Uncle Racist (Mom's brother) and Trucker Puke.
I'll start with Uncle Racist, since there's more going on with him. He certainly lives up to the psuedonym I've given him: I was convinced that he invented just about every racial slur known to man...well, he definitely used every one of them, anyway. My parents weren't too worried about us using any of them; we would get our asses kicked from Minneapolis to New York and back.
While we were still living in our old house, this douchebag was going through a divorce. He'd call Mom up every night and whine and cry over it. He didn't seem to care that she had to work or have kids of her own to worry about, or anything resembling a daily routine. Like clockwork, he'd call her up with the crocodile tear act. After a bit, she'd complain about he was driving her nuts. I even said something about telling him to shut up, but she'd go on about he's her brother and he needs her. Having someone to vent to is nice, but even that becomes old hat.
And during this peaceful period of calling her and stirring shit up, my cousins came to our house almost every day. That too, was also growing old. He would drop them off without any idea of when they'd leave. It varied from a couple of hours to all day, sometimes they would even spend the night.
Before we moved to our farm house, this place made a sardine can look like a five-star hotel. (I exaggerate, but it was really cramped.) Squeezing my parents, the three of us and the five demon spawn into this tiny house for night after night was never the best experience.
It made me wonder....if the folks were sick of helping him out, why keep doing it? If my brothers and I were being idiots like that, we would be told to kick rocks.
But, it wasn't just the divorce crap that they helped him with (the unexpected visit finally stopped). I lost track of how many times Dad would fix his van or pick him up or give him a lift somewhere. Again, if we pulled all this crap, we'd be told where to go after one time too many. But, for some strange reason, Dad, with all his grumbling, would still help the son of a bitch out. One time, it nearly got Dad killed.
Dad brought Uncle Racist to a store to get something. The store was just robbed prior to them getting there. When they left, they got pulled over by the cops. The cops thought they robbed the place; an eyewitness said they didn't do it. The lucky part? Dad was driving a truck at the time that backfired very loud when the motor was shut off. If the cops had made him turn off the truck, we would've lost Dad a lot sooner than when we did.
After that incident, you'd think that would've been the end of that crap. But, it continued ever after we moved, albeit in smaller quantities.
Now on to Trucker Puke.
This is probably the ONLY guy on the planet that has the capability of making Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh look like refined gentlemen. He creeped me out, my brothers barely spoke to him. But, my parents apparently developed a soft spot for the loser, just as they did with Uncle Racist. He was actually the ex-nephew-in-law of a friend down the road, I guess that's why they'd do some things for him.
Anyway, he was an over the road trucker who didn't have a lot of friends (makes you wonder why). He would either go to his former uncle's to eat and/or shower, or he would show up at our place for the same things.
At first, the parents were okay with giving him a hand once in a while. Them he started showing up almost all the time. He seemed to have honed his sense of smell or something, because when we would sit down to eat, like clockwork, he would appear, ready for his share.
This routine got really old. Mom and Dad would start to complain about him being a sponge, yet still allowing him to get away with it. They had no problems with telling us, their own kids, no. Somehow, they failed to tell this creep the same thing.
That all came to a head when my parents went somewhere, and we stayed home. They told us that we were NOT to let anyone in until they got back. Simple enough order to follow, right? A short while after they left, who shows up but Trucker Puke himself.
He wanted us to let him in, but since we were home alone, it wasn't going to happen. Consequences be damned, I opened the door long enough to tell him to come back later, then slammed it in his face. I wasn't concerned about what my parents would do; I just wanted him to stop coming over. Of course, they got mad at once they found out. I argued that they didn't want anyone inside when were home alone, that I was simply doing what I was told. They saw right throught that. I told them that it wasn't doing anyone any good to complain about him behind his back, then let him pull the stunts that he'd been pulling on us for months. I think they decided after a while to put a halt to the bullshit. We saw him less and less (which was okay by me), until he stopped coming by.
What did I take away from all of this? I decided that I wouldn't let anyone (family or otherwise) get away with taking advantage of me. If saying "no" makes me look like a bitch, then I'll be the world's biggest bitch.
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