As I sit in my office, coughing up gunk and praying that a lung doesn't come up with it, I'm thinking about Easter with my family. Both extended sides of my family, as well as the immediate unit of parentals, brother, and I, are a little ... wonky.
As in disfunctional. Highly disfunctional.
And there was a lot of really uncomfortable tension yesterday because my dad doesn't get along with my mom's family, and vice versa, and also because of the ham.
I don't eat ham - that's what it means to be a vegetarian. And yes, I have messed up before and eaten things that probably would be considered meat, but I had no intention of doing so yesterday. Which really offended my family. I wasn't impolite about it - made no rude comments or faces, said nothing offensive ... I simply reminded them that although the ham looked delicious, I've decided not to eat meat anymore, but thank you very much anyway.
And that should have been the end of it, but it wasn't. All of them insisted on being personally offended, very loudly, for the next hour.
"Emily, the ham's really good! You should try some."
"Ham is a vegetable, ha ha"
"What's wrong with the ham?"
"You're hurting your grandmother's feelings."
"Here, just eat a little piece."
And then they actually started waving it in my face and trying to make me eat it.
Having the temper that I have, and given the choice of escaping or yelling loudly at my own family, my brother and I opted to escape outside with our candy.
So we sat on the front porch in the sun and talked about how strange people can be, and I said a bunch of prayers under my breath thanking Jesus for coming back and asking him to not let me kill my family. And then I ate too many Sour Patch Kids and got really sick.
The End.
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