The only relative I have living anywhere near me is my father’s older brother. I’ll call him Uncle Fester. Last summer, he invited my wife and I to his house in an affluent Los Angeles suburb for the 4th of July, and we had a wonderful time. We spent most of the day there, and because it’s a day trip for us, politely declined the offer of a room at their house for the night. As we’re leaving, I say something like, “You’ll have to come visit us someday,” to be polite. Little did I realize that those words would come back to haunt me. Being in the man’s house for a few hours on one day did little to prepare us for having him as a houseguest.
So it comes up time for Christmas, and Mrs. Six thinks it’s time to return the invite. We have plenty of room, with four bedrooms and just the two of us, so we call up Uncle Fester and ask if he’d like to spend some part of Christmas with us, and he accepts. From the moment he arrives, the abuse and generally obnoxious behavior is virtually nonstop.
During his stay he:
insists that I move my “rice burning piece of shit” (a brand new Hyundai XG350) out of my garage so that he can park “My Caddy” there instead. When I go for a grocery run to get some things we forgot for Christmas dinner, he moves his car from the driveway into the garage and I nearly rear end it on my return because I expect the garage to be empty when I press the garage door button.
tells us we must be too lazy to get a “real” Christmas tree when he sees our fiber optic tree.
insists that he and Aunt Reason sleep in our bedroom so that he won’t have to walk across the hall to the bathroom during the night.
makes repeated jokes about Mrs. Six’s size (she’s 4’ 8", 75 lbs.), age (19), youthful appearance (she could easily pass for a 14 or 15 year old), and accent.
smokes in the house despite repeated requests that he do so only outside, uses our dishes as ashtrays, and complains that we don’t have ashtrays in the house, even though we don’t want anyone smoking here in the first place. The whole No Smoking, therefore no ashtrays concept seems to be beyond his ability to comprehend.
asks for “a drink”, and fumes because all we have is bottled water, milk, orange juice, apple juice, Pepsi, and Dr. Pepper. "I didn’t ask for “something to drink”, he says, “I asked for ‘A Drink’”. As those two things sound the same to me, I ask for clarification, and get an angry stare. Aunt Reason explains that he means an alcoholic drink. I explain that we don’t drink, so we don’t have any alcohol in the house, and he sulks.
throws a fit when we tell him that we open presents just after midnight Christmas morning. We tell him that he and Aunt Reason can open their with us at that time, or we can wait until everyone gets up Christmas morning and exchange presents with each other then, but Mrs. Six and I will be opening our presents to each other at the time we see fit. This compromise isn’t good enough for him–all the presents should be opened at the same time, and that time is Christmas morning. Undeterred, we open our presents to each other at midnight anyway (leaving all presents to and from them for later that morning), and he’s pissed off.
insists that the big holiday meal should be on Christmas day itself, not Christmas Eve as we like to do it, and should be served at noon, not at 5pm. When we give in to this demand, it’s still not enough.
gets up and storms away from the table when the dinner is actually served without any explanation as to what he’s upset about. We find out later that he was upset that Mrs. Six started carving the turkey herself instead of asking him to do it. To this day, I have no idea why this upset him–he wouldn’t say because it’s supposed to obvious, and was further pissed off that I told Mrs. Six in front of him that she did nothing wrong.
goes through our kitchen cabinets and turns all of the glasses upside down (ok this one is more bizarre than obnoxious but it was just so weird that I had to include it)
takes money from the plastic tubs we keep by the door into which all of our change goes, saying that he’s going to get some cigarrettes and doesn’t want to break a 20.
goes window shopping while Mrs. Six and I get in line an hour early for The Two Towers so that we can get good seats when they let the crowd in, then tries to cut in front of the 200 some people behind us when he comes back half an hour later.
insists that the house is too cold at 65, and that the thermostat be turned up. I suggest that he put on a sweater or sweatshirt, and we have extra blankets for the bed. He then proceeds to turn the thermostat up to 75 whenever I’m not looking.
tells us that if we were so short of money that we couldn’t afford a “real” house, meaning a wood frame (our house is a split level with a poured concrete frame) we should just have gotten an apartment and saved up.
Because this is my father’s brother, and I value my relationship with my father, I put up with a lot of this man’s nonsense. It wasn’t until he started making racist remarks about Asians, seemingly oblivious to the fact that my wife is Asian, that I asked him to leave. The remark that began this final rant of his had something to do with him not fighting Koreans so that I could turn around and buy a car from them. When I pointed out that Hyundais are made by South Koreans, you know, our allies during the war and now, he said somthing to the effect that all of those gooks were alike, and if we just let them kill each other, we wouldn’t have them coming over here and taking our jobs. When I asked him to leave, he didn’t seem to understand that he’d just insulted my wife, and insisted that he meant other Orientals, and that Mrs. Six was one of the “good ones”.
My father wasn’t upset that I asked him to leave, was a little surprised that the visit lasted as long as it did, and told me not to expect an apology, but that Fester would likely still ask me back to his house for some holiday gathering. If he does, I don’t think we’ll be going.
