ridged fingernails
Moot point now, I’m sure, but here’s my $0.03 anyway (includes interest).
If your being there was important to your brother, he should have given you time to rearrange your schedule. To spring the surprise on you as well as your father at the last minute and expect you to be there is incredibly rude on his part. You have an obligation to celebrate your father’s birthday, and you also have an obligation to your students. You fulfilled the first one; you must also fulfill the second, even if you’ve got a nosy sister with no true conception of what consideration for others means.
Perhaps the brother had told the busybody sister and she was supposed to help spread the word. Ye olde fashioned communication break-downe.
In which case, busybody sister dropped the ball, and she’s the one to blame for Skald having another engagement. 'Course, bro would share the culpability, since he was the one organizing the event, so he shouldn’t have delegated responsibility for informing everyone else, anyway, or at least verifying that everyone was informed and could make it.
Requiring someone’s attendance at an event without allowing them adequate time to plan says, “My whims are more important than anything you could possibly be doing with your time.” It’s incredibly self-centered.
I feel obliged to defend my brother. He invited me to dinner, his treat, but was not at all angered or vexed that I declined originally, since it was such short notice; and, in fact, rescheduled around my needs.
It’s the OTHER brother I despise.
If they had let you in on the surprise a little sooner, you may have been able to make arrangements. You’ve celebrated with your dad, given him his gift, and will see the rest of the family on another day this weekend.
I think you’ve fulfilled your familial obligations with regards to Papa’s birthday, so go teach your class and fret no more.
Actually, I’m facing that very dilemma as we speak. Two months ago one of my best childhood buddies (in consideration for being the best man at my wedding) emailed me to say he was going to be in town. I was stoked! Haven’t seen him for 15 years.
Time goes by, times goes, by times goes by… Dropped him a few notes to firm up plans, never heard back.
Meanwhile my family is asking me about Canadian Thanksgiving (this weekend) and we can’t keep them hanging Finally, two days before he’s supposed to arrive, he drops me a line saying he’s not going to stop in Toronto after all because it’s too much of a detour, but can I drive half-way to Ottawa to come see him? Oh, and he made new plans with his wife, so it has to either be the day my (future) in-laws are having us over for the big family dinner, or else during week: “How flexible is your lunch hour?” Not flexible enough to drive 160 miles out of town.
I think he’s pissed with me now because I’ve had to decline his invitation. Couldn’t be helped though. It would have been rude to keep my in-laws’ invitation dangling, and I would have needed far more notice to take the day off from work during a really busy time.
Yeah, I don’t think your brother did anything in the wrong. He acknowledge that it was really short notice on his part and seemed pretty gracious about accommodating you to compensate for his last-minute planning.
It’s the busybody sister who needs a retaliatory prank for being a whiney priss.
Ah, my misunderstanding. Sounds like your sister’s just itching for any excuse for a fight, then. Maybe you should just punch her in the teeth and get it over with.*
*This may be a joke.
You’re the only one who has a right to be pissed, here. You gave him every opportunity to reserve time in your schedule, and he gave you a half-assed last-minute plan in return. I’d just smile and repeat that you’d be happy to get together with him the next time he’s in town, if he can give you a solid idea of when he’s going to be there.
(delete duplicate post at OP’s request - Rico)
Rhymers don’t hit girls unless they come at us with knives. Family rule. Similarly, unless they come at us with handguns, we don’t pull knives. We only break out the handguns when they are brandishing assault rifles, and we don’t use Uzis unless they have flame throwers, and so forth. That’s why the Israeli branch of the family is extinct.
If I were paranoid and untrusting, which I am, and if my sister were devious and manipulative, which she is not, I’d say she was working up ammo to use against me to get me to come to her big to-do next month to celebrate Convocation Sunday (the end to her church’s big annual convention). I always try to skip that, which always vexes her because she considers it a family event.
Doesn’t have to be deliberately devious and manipulative to be connected. If you have a habit of avoiding a family event that she coordinates and feels is important, this could be the idiomatic straw. She’s not going to see “Skald was informed last-minute and is trying to be fair to his students,” she’s seeing “Skald is missing another family event–does he hate us, or worse, just me?”
I missed a couple of family things in a row earlier this year and got a bunch of “oh em gees u haets us” myself, so I know how these things can go. People like to think that everything’s about them, even when it’s not.
“A bottle!”
Oh, I know. Now that his emails are all frosty I’m mostly going :rolleyes: . Oh, and I made a boo-boo, the woman accompanying him is his fiancee not wife. He keeps calling her “The Mrs.” so I forget they aren’t married yet.
I’m mildly miffed that what started out as a “Hey, we’re traveling up to see my family and want to visit you!” has turned quite transparently into: “I’m really taking my girl for a holiday to Ottawa and Montreal. Since I’m obligated to see my family, I can try to shoehorn you in too.”