{"id":620,"date":"2005-10-17T20:28:48","date_gmt":"2005-10-18T00:28:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/?p=620"},"modified":"2005-10-17T21:05:04","modified_gmt":"2005-10-18T01:05:04","slug":"1-is-the-suckiest-number","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/2005\/10\/17\/1-is-the-suckiest-number\/","title":{"rendered":"1 is the suckiest number"},"content":{"rendered":"

[Take two. I was almost done when this entry got eaten.]<\/p>\n

J1 and I have never gotten along in our lives, and it’s only gotten worse as we’ve grown older. We’re just too different to be friends. And I can accept that much blame for the issues we have, but not all, or even most. We could at least be civil were it not for his attitude. He has the need to belittle any opinion or interest other than his own, and to try and make everyone else feel stupid for having deviated in the slightest from his narrow worldview.<\/p>\n

We turn, for example, to this Sunday. Now this was an interesting day, because a lot of the initial stuff I didn’t really notice until I thought back over the day.<\/p>\n

1. I was slightly late arriving at the event. I had left a few minutes later than I wanted to, then had to stop and get gas, then just missed a train. So by the time I finally got there, I was a solid 20, 25 minutes behind schedule. As I was walking to the Hatch Shell from the T, I called to let them know I was there. No one answered mom’s cell, so I called J1’s. He immediately began trying to pinpoint where I was so he could give me directions, and did not believe me when I informed him that I was quite able to make my way 100 feet along a path to a giant structure already visible. (Later, he made some snide remarks about how he never takes the T, the implication being that driving and paying $10 for parking is somehow more virtuous.)<\/p>\n

2. As we began walking, J1 looked down at my feet and exclaimed, “Katie’s practically barefoot! Walking like an Indian in those moccasins!” Point one, I was not wearing moccasins. I was wearing pink sneakers. Of course, they were not $150 Nikes or whatever sneakers he would have recognized as acceptable walking gear. For some reason he assumed that I was not able to pick out proper shoes in which to walk 6 miles. Point two, for whatever reason, he used the diminutive of the name, which no one uses anymore — this is a new habit he’s only acquired in the past 2 or 3 years, and subconscious or not, it’s pretty telling.<\/p>\n

3. The two of us ended up pulling out ahead of the rest of our group. During this time, J1 commented on how slow the others were. Eventually we stopped and waited for them to catch up, at which point I began talking to my aunt. We ended up ahead of the others (having not increased our pace at all), and after my aunt and I stopped to let the others catch up again, J1 promptly informed me that mom was mad at me for having gotten out ahead and thus prevented her from taking pictures.<\/p>\n

4. While we were walking together, I tried to find out from him what he planned to get mom for Christmas. The resulting discussion touched on a few topics, and I ended up mentioning to him our plans for writing a paper for the next HP symposium<\/a>. His amused disbelief that anyone could have an academic interest in Harry Potter or children’s literature in general was not something he attempted to hide.<\/p>\n

5. After the event, the plan had been for us to eat lunch together. I had been looking forward to this, as had, I believe, my mom. My aunt wasn’t able to stay for lunch though, so it was just the four of us. Mom and C suggested Cheers. Now, I’m not a huge fan of that chain, and so I wasn’t enthusiastic about the choice. As soon as I registered my opinion, J1, who hadn’t been very keen on Cheers before, demanded what was wrong with it.<\/p>\n

6. We arrived at Cheers to find that the wait would be 20-30 minutes. At this point, J1 began making noise about wanting to go home. Which would have been fine by me, except that he, mom and C all came in together, and his departure would require them to go too. Mom was hungry, and I pointed out that I had been promised lunch. (Which, of course, makes everything that happened after MY fault.) I suggested we walk to one of the other nearby restaurants, but J1 declared they were all too far away and there was nothing around. He instead decided all on his own that he would drive me back out to Davis and we would eat somewhere in between.<\/p>\n

7. J1 asked me how to drive from Boston Common to Davis. I don’t drive in Boston very often, so I told him how I would go: back over to Cambridge and up Mass Ave. (I fully admit there may be better ways. I just don’t know them off the top of my head.) He rejected this plan and demanded I supply another, one he deemed acceptable, along with a list of restaurants along this new route.<\/p>\n

8. Since I’m not mapquest, I wasn’t able to give him this information, so J1 decided instead that we would all go to the 99 in Charlestown. He drove us there, being the only one of us who knew where it was. Once there, we were cursed with an absolutely terrible waitress. She made us wait for 20 minutes, she messed up our drinks, she didn’t take C’s order, she messed up mom’s meal, she forgot J1’s salad, and she was just generally terrible. J1 was outraged; he wanted us to leave before the food arrived. However, when the rest of us began to complain about her service, he changed his tune and began trying to tell us to shut up. <\/p>\n

9. Mom said she would pay. When the bill arrived, I picked it up to look at it and see if the salad had been taken off. J1 tried to snatch it from my hand, claiming it was none of my business since I wasn’t paying. He then told mom to leave $50. Given the bill, this was MORE than a 20% tip! Frankly, as awful as this girl was, she deserved no tip at all, and I didn’t hesitate to say so. J1 again told me to shut up, since I hadn’t offered to pay. He then started pulling money out of his pocket and throwing it on the table.<\/p>\n

10. During the wait for the meal, J1 had begun quizzing me again on how to get from Charlestown to Davis. Now, while I’m somewhat familiar with the main streets in the center of Boston, I know absolutely nothing about the streets in Charlestown, so there was no way I was going to be able to do this. And J1 doesn’t know much about Medford or Somerville, so even though I could give him street names out there, they were meaningless to him. So, as one does, I tried to come up with locations near<\/i> Davis Square that he might know. We finally struck gold when I told him it was near the intersection of 93 and 16. He said he could get there.<\/p>\n

11. Or I thought we had struck gold. Apparently, in J1’s brain, the word ‘near’ is the same as ‘Davis Square is the intersection between 93 and 16’. As soon as we got off 93 he began demanding to know where it was. I was trying to figure out which would be faster: to turn around so we could cut up to Powderhouse Circle, or, since we were already on it, to just take Mystic Valley Parkway all around Tufts. But my decision wasn’t fast enough for J1. He began declaring that I didn’t know where I was going, that I had given him bad directions (when I hadn’t actually given him any directions at all yet!), that I had lied about where Davis Sq. was, and all sorts of stupid things that didn’t make any sense at all.<\/p>\n

12. At this point he started yelling about how I never pay for any meals and a lot of other crap, and I got fed up with him. (Childishly) I decided since he claimed he knew better than I did how to get there, he could just get himself there.<\/p>\n

I really don’t know what it is with him. I try to at least act interested in what’s going on with him. I think his life sounds unutterably dull, but I don’t tell him that without provocation.<\/p>\n

I told mom on the phone on Saturday that the bickering NJ family on Amazing Race this time is us. And she agreed. I know everyone else is kind of shocked by them — the people at TWOP certainly are — and it’s uncomfortable to recognize them. But after I said that, she also said that if they have another 4 person team, she, me, J2 and my aunt should do it. And as I thought about it, I realized that J1 really is the cause of all the strife. If he’s out of the picture, the bickering between me, mom and J2 is really much more normal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Take two. I was almost done when this entry got eaten.] J1 and I have never gotten along in our lives, and it’s only gotten worse as we’ve grown older. We’re just too different to be friends. And I can accept that much blame for the issues we have, but not all, or even most. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}