Written 2004-11-22 08:20
Nov. 25th, 2004 06:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishI still don't like being here, but at least I have reasons now. Not good ones, but reasons.
I see my social discomfort echoed in the faces of all the cousins. Well, all those older than about twelve. None of us know each other, none of us have any real desire to get to know each other. We sit at dinner and strain to make polite conversation, we sit around before and after dinner and listen to the "grown-ups" talk. Curiously, this discomfort is present even in those cousins that grew up near each other, Mark and Leah and Brian. (Leah's Ben I assume keeps quiet because he's new to the family. An exaggerated case.)
Maybe it's the age gap that does it. The eight "grown-ups" have all known each other for years and years, and are used to interacting with each other and not with us. Brian is nearly my age [two years younger?] but is still treated as a youngster. [Chan the half-cousin, whose name is inexplicably pronounced "Shawn" and is female, is an exception: she already had kids when she joined the family, and thus moved in the grown-ups' circle rather than the kids'.] I might've noticed a similar thing at the Memorial Day party if there's been anyone else there from my age group. Parents have trouble treating their own offspring as adults; how much more difficult for other people's children?
Add to this a general ambient distaste for trips to Arkansas [amazing what having all family vacations be to the same place year after year will do to you] and for the people here, issues left over from childhood / teenagerdom that I still haven't quite resolved, and I begin to get a sense of why I've been on edge since about five o'clock yesterday evening.
Dinner was quite tasty, at least. Cinnamon creme pie makes up for many things.
We're staying in one of those sketchy motels that you see in small towns everywhere: one story, rows of rooms, a sad neon sign out front declaring VACANCY. We got two rooms, so the Welches are in one and I'm with my parents in the second. It's, um, an experience. The rooms are slightly less sketchy on the inside: the carpet is clean, the television works, and there are no Magic Fingers beds. There's also no closet nook, just a hanging rack, and the bathroom runs the length of the room at the width of a hallway. It could be worse.
And with that we're off to face the day. Thank God for Dana and the ability to write on the road.
[Posted with hblogger 2.0 http://www.normsoft.com/hblogger/]
I see my social discomfort echoed in the faces of all the cousins. Well, all those older than about twelve. None of us know each other, none of us have any real desire to get to know each other. We sit at dinner and strain to make polite conversation, we sit around before and after dinner and listen to the "grown-ups" talk. Curiously, this discomfort is present even in those cousins that grew up near each other, Mark and Leah and Brian. (Leah's Ben I assume keeps quiet because he's new to the family. An exaggerated case.)
Maybe it's the age gap that does it. The eight "grown-ups" have all known each other for years and years, and are used to interacting with each other and not with us. Brian is nearly my age [two years younger?] but is still treated as a youngster. [Chan the half-cousin, whose name is inexplicably pronounced "Shawn" and is female, is an exception: she already had kids when she joined the family, and thus moved in the grown-ups' circle rather than the kids'.] I might've noticed a similar thing at the Memorial Day party if there's been anyone else there from my age group. Parents have trouble treating their own offspring as adults; how much more difficult for other people's children?
Add to this a general ambient distaste for trips to Arkansas [amazing what having all family vacations be to the same place year after year will do to you] and for the people here, issues left over from childhood / teenagerdom that I still haven't quite resolved, and I begin to get a sense of why I've been on edge since about five o'clock yesterday evening.
Dinner was quite tasty, at least. Cinnamon creme pie makes up for many things.
We're staying in one of those sketchy motels that you see in small towns everywhere: one story, rows of rooms, a sad neon sign out front declaring VACANCY. We got two rooms, so the Welches are in one and I'm with my parents in the second. It's, um, an experience. The rooms are slightly less sketchy on the inside: the carpet is clean, the television works, and there are no Magic Fingers beds. There's also no closet nook, just a hanging rack, and the bathroom runs the length of the room at the width of a hallway. It could be worse.
And with that we're off to face the day. Thank God for Dana and the ability to write on the road.
[Posted with hblogger 2.0 http://www.normsoft.com/hblogger/]
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