Sunday, December 17, 2006
4:01 p.m.

In the holiday spirit, I’m posting an old email I sent about Christmas 2004 with my family. My sister Lisa (the one who’s NOT involved) will appreciate this.

They’re ALL crazy. My dad likes to drink, and has been drinking vodka since this afternoon. I’m not judging, I’m just providing background information. So we’re preparing to sit down for Christmas dinner (my parents, my sister Denice and I) and my dad is poking around at the dining room table. He lifts the lid off a dish, drops and breaks it on the table, because it was hot, apparently. My mom of course overreacts and freaks out because her Corningware lid is broken which loosely translates to: Her day is ruined. I try to minimize the drama by saying “he didn’t mean to, it’s not that big of a deal.” etc. and my sister Denice goes into the room and points out that there are now shards of Corningware in the meatballs, and they are now inedible. She’s a vegetarian so it really wouldn’t make a difference to her anyway. She loves to be right and has a tendency to be very holier-than-thou at times.

Dad: So you’re the fuckin expert on everything, right?

Denice: Every fucking time. You drink a half gallon of vodka and turn into a fucking asshole. I’m fucking leaving.

Dad: Good. Leave.

Me: Well I drove, so we’re not fucking leaving.

Mom: Why do you all have to ruin my holiday, stop that!
So Denice leaves to go for a walk. My mom is still pissed about the broken Corningware and my sister leaving, and my dad is pissed about her being pissed, and about Denice being confrontational. I tell him that they’re both crazy, but that’s not well received.
Denice comes back about 30 minutes later so we sit down to eat. I’m starving because we’ve been waiting for her to return. My dad and I start serving ourselves as normal. My mom just has salad and Denice doesn’t even remove the napkin from her plate (yes, we’re fancy like that). She says, “I’m not going to just act like nothing happened.” Then she and my mom point out that the pasta I’m eating has shards of Corningware on it. I said it was just cheese and I can just pick it off. Seriously, it was just cheese, it was not the disaster they made it out to be. Jesus. But my mom still took my plate away and gave me new pasta from a new, “safe” dish in the kitchen. After about 3 minutes Denice gets up and tells my mom, “I’ll help clean up when you’re done,” and goes upstairs. Way to piss on fuckin Christmas, Denice. Way to go.

So naturally the whole dinner was completely tense. My mom barely ate, my dad ALWAYS eats. I ate more than usual because for once no one made some shitty unnecessary comment about what a screw-up I am.

They are all crazy. I am the normal one and that’s scary. I think I’m Jewish and no one ever told me. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that). They overreact about the stupidest things that make no difference, when they should be appreciating the fact that we live in a country that allows us to even have a warm house to argue in and food to accidentally ruin.

Merry Christmas Everyone! I hope you all had a happy, drama-free holiday.