Operator, Oh Can You Help Me Place This Call?

I am not sure what compelled me to listen as long as I did.

It was an unforgiving rant about why on Earth I would ever create such a situation between my brother and sister. Why on God’s green Earth I would share the juicy little tidbit about my sister being described as a self righteous beyotch. Why I did this, and I did that, and eventually getting caught in a maze of meandering thoughts about various and sundry slights I’ve delivered to her personally over the last decade or so.

I am sure it comes as no surprise at all that I remembered nothing at all about the perceived slights.

One involved something about not making plans to visit the almost beach house of a favorite dead uncle some unspecified weekend in an undetermined year based on an idea she thinks she may have told one of us.

I didn’t listen to the whole thing. It gave me a throbbing headache along the side of my head…in the general vicinity of my ear.

And besides, she would have lost me at hello, if she had said as much. Because the lead off statement, the rallying cry for the big campaign was about my causing the current ruckus between my brother and sister.

A madwoman says what?

Recall if you will, that at the opening scene of the Open Door/XBox/Cat Poop debacle, I was sitting peaceably in my beach chair watching my children try to drown each other at our swim club, while the narcissist-posing-as-lifeguard took no notice whatsoever.

And when called upon to assist with a situation for which I was the most suitable candidate to be of assistance, I went, observed and reported. And yes, I did state the obvious, however unnecessarily in this case: My brother is an ill-mannered idiotic boob.

And in all conversations on the matter since, I was direct and honest and refrained from insulting anyone in my assessment of the situation and did not waver from my position that what my brother had done was wrong to have done, and at a minimum, an apology was due to my sister’s family. What has transpired between them since that time is none of my business. I have relationships, albeit very different relationships, with each of them, no horse in their race.

And yes, I did repeat the nasty comment my brother had asserted that he’d made and further claimed my mother had endorsed.

But she does not know that. Because when Charlotte called Joe to tell him his fight was with her not anyone else in the family, he offered up a repeat performance without solicitation.

How the finger came to be wagging at me is something I’ll have to look up in Dysfunctional Families for Dummies. I have no Earthly idea.