Here Come the Judge

People are funny. It is a natural tendency to project your motivations and character traits onto other people. Dishonest people think other people are just as dishonest. People who love cats think everyone loves cats.

And sneaky, underhanded people think others are sneaky and underhanded.

Witchiepoo and her idiot minions obviously thought they were enlightening J. to my true nature by forwarding the voicemail message to him.

No secrets, he knew the moment I’d hung up. How telling that they’d thought otherwise.
Wonder what nasty little tidbits Em and Chuck are concealing until the I Dos are done?

It was clear that the brain trust was hell bent on creating a distraction from their own conduct by making this what they hoped would be a thorough condemnation of me. With my appalling personal qualities fully exposed, I’d be retired from life within their family and it could go on as it always had – problems festering, but no longer in plain view, like so many elephants in the room, no pun intended.

They could no longer pretend that this was not the agenda.

I called Endora again. She must have had an audience. One that was salivating like spectators at ringside dying for a bloodbath. She must have felt the pressure. She answered.

I identified myself and suggested that we try to talk about things. She screeched that she had not lied.

I stated again that I was not suggesting that she had lied. What she had said was true. What I’d hoped to learn was what motivated her to say it.

She said nothing. The Peanut Gallery must have been caught off guard.

“Were you trying to make trouble? Were you trying to make trouble for me and J.?” I suggested.

She protested but in doing so told me to “drop the authoritative tone.”

Well, friends, I am not a kid, and frankly am far too old to start getting scolded by someone else’s mother now.

I replied that I believe you teach people how to treat you and I was not about to allow myself to be treated like she had with the comments and the voicemails and her other underhanded tactics.

I must have poked at a nerve – had no one ever called this person on her personal conduct? This can’t be her first foray into accountability, can it?

She launched into a tirade not unlike Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. I feared for my parakeet. Somewhere in the rant she accused me of tearing the family apart.

Pretty cheap fabric if I can leave it in tatters from this distance.

She went on to say that everything was fine until I’d made a “big stink” about the wedding. I am sure Norman Bates would have said the same thing until his mother died.

I reasoned that I’d not made a so-called stink, I’d simply declined the invitation. It was my right to do so. Isn’t that the point of the response card? The possibility that someone might choose not to come? Perhaps in favor of a more pressing engagement like an F-Troop rerun festival.

She made her “no kid” argument. She’d clearly drunk the Kool-aid. Was I supposed to believe that if J.’s tween were not in the wedding, she’d be excluded based on her age? Hardly.

I dismantled that argument and again tried to calmly relate the reason I can’t send the message that my attendance would send to my uninvited kids.

I must have hit my mark. She had no cogent retort. She did have the presence of mind to reach for another grenade, however.

“You know what you are? You are a trouble maker! You are exactly the kind of person that isn’t happy unless they are going around making trouble!”

And from there the argument went spinning off in the direction of Hell itself.

Name calling. Comparisons to heinous people we both abhor. Insults that strike at one another’s heart. After mutual phone slamming (mine much less satisfying since it was a cell) I dialed J.

I ran on my sword. I had gotten sucked into a detestable argument. I’d taken my hands off the wheel. I actually gave Witchiepoo something to judge me for.

Bring on the Flying Fickle Finger of Fate award. It was all mine.