The Great Family Trainwreck of 2008

subtitle: Why I Am Suddenly, Since The Last 24 Hours, Wildly Enthusiastic About Leaving For England And Possibly Never Coming Back.

I would also like to point out, before I begin, that I am the only completely innocent person here, so why I am receiving waves of hostility from both sides is totally beyond me.

So my brother met this girl on World of Warcrack. (I'll pause for a moment so you can all react in the appropriate manner. Done? Good.) Apparently they hit it off rather well and have been talking daily for the past couple of months, and now it's getting rather serious and he would like to go to her city and meet her. He does have enough money saved up that he could probably manage it on his own if he needed to, but he'd rather our parents knew and approved, which is good. The only problem is, our parents are....they're....well, let me put it this way; if I were in his place, I'm not sure I wouldn't prefer being ripped apart by enraged hyenas to discussing this with them. They may be the two awkwardest people alive, plus they're sarcastic, and my dad in particular will tease without mercy. That doesn't really explain, or describe the cringing horror I feel at the thought that someday, if life doesn't go as I plan, I might have to ask them to invite my boyfriend over to visit, but it's really the best I can do. So, he IMs me first (he is currently back at school in California) to ask me what I think he should do, which I really don't blame him for, and I am as sympathetic, non-awkward, and unsarcastic as it is possible for me to be. I told him, basically, that he should call our mother and explain the situation, as I thought, at the time, that she would react better. This was yesterday.

I have to admit, at this point, that his description of the girl raised a couple of red flags for me, but as I don't know the whole situation (this is the first I was hearing of it) and I figured he would discuss it in more detail with our parents, I issued a small caution but I didn't do anything else.

I really don't think he could have blown this whole situation better if he'd tried. He called the house, I heard my mother pick up the phone, and I went upstairs to make my bed and shift the piles of England stuff around a few more times for no reason. There's no shouting from downstairs, so I figure it's going okay. Ten minutes later, my mother knocks on my door, and proceeds to blow a gasket. At me. My mother does this thing where she is very diplomatic for up to about 15 minutes at a time, and then she can't hold it in any longer and explodes without warning, and I got caught in her path. (It's always me. I don't know why.) So she apparently was very calm about explaining that she didn't think he should go because he didn't know this girl, how did he know she wasn't an axe murderer or covered in hair, how does he know those pictures she sent were even of her, all the sensible things you would ask in that situation to make sure the person is still here in reality with the rest of us. And then she dragged me out and said everything she really wanted to say to him but couldn't because she was being diplomatic - what a damn naif he is, this girl is totally raising red flags, doesn't he have more common sense than this, if he had dated more in high school he'd have a damn clue and we wouldn't be having this problem now, etc, etc, you get the picture, I'm sure.

I made a tactical error here, I have to admit. I did tell him that it was best to just discuss it with them, but my mother reacted to the fact that she had never even heard about this girl and now my brother was telling her about everything in a five-minute blurb and oh, by the way, can I have some money to travel to this other city, which won't be cheap. You need to give her time to adjust to these things. I remembered, too late, that when I wanted to apply for grad school in a different major I spent weeks carefully prepping her. If you spring things like this on her suddenly she blows up. Given how thoroughly unperceptive David is, I really ought to have warned him about this, but I just didn't think to.

The other problem is that he couldn't have timed it worse in terms of our finances. He just got an expensive apartment and furniture, we just paid my housing deposit and tuition for both of us, and, best of all, our parents just booked flights to England to visit me for Christmas last night. If you're going to ask them for something expensive, you have to time these things better or be careful how you ask, and he apparently hasn't learned this lesson yet.

So, while I was attempting to calm her down or at least remove myself from the line of fire, David was brilliantly compounding his error by calling our dad (who is away from home right now). I wasn't able to warn him not to because my mother had sprouted tentacles and was sucking me down into her vortex of righteous anger, and I'm not really sure what actually happened there anyway. David told me later that Dad said it was okay if Mom said it was okay, but as he completely failed to pick up on how Mom was mutating and growing fangs even as he spoke to her, so I don't think that's what was actually meant.

Then, once I had gotten her to let go and her eyes had stopped glowing and faded back to a dark yellow, Dad called her. She took that one in the bedroom, and by this point I was attempting to stop David from compounding the problem by calling her yet again (he's such a boy, he simply has no idea) so I really don't know what happened there, either. So, at this point, my brother is playing Romeo on my computer screen, telling me that if Mom doesn't let him meet this girl he will hate her for ever and ever omg, and my mother is standing in the doorway snarling through a mouthful of teeth like a deep-sea fish that by golly that dumbass kid isn't going anywhere until after Christmas break, and during Christmas break we are all going to visit me in England and we are going to have a family talk (translation - my mother is going to do her damndest to talk him out of it, and for some reason I have to be there). It was all rather uncomfortable. Then my mother stomped off to bed, snorting smoke and dragging her tail, I spent another half hour talking David out of any more phone calls and trying to contain the damage, and now I am really looking forward to putting an ocean between me and my family and trying desperately to think of a place to be on Thursday evening when Dad gets home, any place at all that isn't here.

So, to sum this up - my brother has a secret girlfriend, and wants to meet her, and thought the best thing to do would be to spring this on our parents all at once just as they are preparing to live on pasta for a month while they pay off expenses (not really).

Well played, Scorpius family. Well played.