Why my family sucks

[superbadgirl]

Seriously. I sent out an email yesterday to the Cities sibs, asking if any of them were heading out to the wedding (in Podunk, MN) earlier than my sister B was and if I could hitch a ride. M responded back, saying he'd check with his wife and oh, by the way, had I heard their news? Yeah, I got the news that they are expecting another child via an offhand comment on an email.

I know it's not as exciting as when a first child is announced, but dayum, a friggin' phone call would have been nice. Everytime some thing screwed up like this happens, I should make note of it for when the parties involved complain about how communication is lacking in our clan. Sheesh.

I will not be surprised one bit if one day I receive a call like, "Oh, and guess what else happened two months ago? Your brother had his hand amputated. Thought you'd heard about that already. Whoops."

This is, after all, the family who couldn't get it together enough to inform my brother when my grandfather passed away. The first he heard of it was, "So, the funeral is on Saturday..." and he had no clue for whom the funeral was.

Comments

[captain-tiv.livejournal.com]

Toward the end of my grandmother's life, she had some mental problems. It wasn't alzheimer's or senility, but it was something that no one could or would tell me what it was. What I found interesting is that no one told me that she had gone blind. I only saw her once a year at Christmas, and she didn't behave any differently than other times I'd seen her. I didn't know.

A cousin I'd grown up with and I were talking, and I overheard our mothers discussing someone who was pregnant. I turned to my cousin and asked who was pregnant -- surprise, it was her. She was five months along and no one had told me. She didn't look pregnant either.

[gategrrl.livejournal.com]

I'm the youngest of three siblings, and I moved away from the homestead (FAR away: much as I love my family, man, they sure can be irritating). But even before I moved away, or perhaps partly because of it, I was always the frigging last person to hear news - you know, the kind that rocks an entire family type of news? - because whichever aunt or uncle or even my father thought I'd already heard it from someone else. Like, give me a break!

Then I went to Korea for a year and a half, a lot of family shit happened I was *glad* I missed, then I went directly to California from there, and you know what? Except for the news from or about a few select people, I really don't give a shit any longer if I hear it or not. I would always send nice long letters about what was happening with me, but no one EVER reciprocated (okay, sometimes someone did here and there) and when I stopped being the newspout, people asked me what was going on.

Der, communication is a two way street, and family, I wasn't going to be the one way street any longer.

[superbadgirl]

Der, communication is a two way street, and family, I wasn't going to be the one way street any longer.

Indeed. I even went to the trouble of starting a Yahoo group for us, to post news items and to generally just keep up with each other. I was the only one who ever posted. I also am typically the only one to send out emails to everyone - I'm not a huge phone person, so this is actually putting in some kind of concerted effort. Again, was greeted by the chirrup of crickets and every once in a while I swear I caught a tumbleweed roll across my computer screen.

My mom will call every once in a while, and I SHOULD call them more often. I know that. She called to grill me about the mysterious gift certs she and my dad got. ;)

[librarianstales.livejournal.com]

Ouch.

This sounds like my Dad's side of the family. I normally first hear about major family fuctions when someone says something like, "So why weren't you at so-and-so's graduation/birthday/wedding/etc last week?"