Today mom went with a sister for a fall viewing car ride and to eat at a restaurant an hour away. I stayed home to do laundry and other house stuff. Mom told me the rest of the family and their kids and spouses were at the restaurant for her birthday. Once again nobody took responsibility to make sure everybody was told. Thanks everybody the birthday lunch was great I guess if you were there. Like usual they must have assumed mother was responsible to let everyone know about the family event, even if it was her secret birthday lunch. I wrote this to vent and now let it go, almost.
Ooooh, that’s harsh.
My brothers buried my dad without bothering to tell me when and where the funeral was going to be. Thanks, guys. I’ll remember that when I’m buying your Christmas and birthday presents never.
So, the person who planned the secret birthday lunch didn’t invite everyone who was supposed to be there (and as her daughter, you are definitely on the “supposed to be there” list)? That sucks and is irresponsible. Do the people who plan things in your family not know that the inviting is their responsibility?
Nope. This happens way to often.
I’m a he. No need to post a sorry.
Your family needs to learn how to do things properly. 
OK, this is just me…
I’d be on the phone doing some cussing. I don’t suffer in silence.
You say it happens a lot. Tear 'em a new one and it probably won’t happen again.
What got me is that apparently the subject of the secret luncheon was expected to have told, when, by definition, she wouldn’t have known about it ahead of time. That makes no sense at all.
Yeesh. And I thought it was bad when I was snubbed from the guest list of one of my sister’s bridal showers (and I mean both one of my sisters and one of her many, many bridal showers :rolleyes:)
Can you tell the story of how you came to be excluses from the funeral? I realize it might be too much of a hijack.
Harmonious, do you plan to say anything to the family, or is this a case of, “Oh, this again…”?
I dunno, I’m not sure that I would be devastated to have quiet home time to myself instead of hanging out with a bunch of people for whom I would seem to be an afterthought.
HD, my advise to you depends on whether you want this pattern to change or whether your strongest reaction is to roll your eyes and think ‘Man, you people suck’ to yourself. If you want it to change, find out who organized it and call them up and ask why on earth you were left out. Clearly, the others found out, and not through your mother, for whom it was a surprise, so how were they informed and why weren’t you? Be calm but forceful and don’t let them off the hook. Do this every single time something like this happens; the squeaky wheel and all that.
If it isn’t worth the effort to try to push them to change, let it go. Don’t worry about shoulds and ought tos and the like; your family is the way it is. Can you accept them as is or not?
Is this a family-wide problem or with one specific thoughtless or malicious individual?
In any case, they earn a boo and you have my sympathy.
The excuse is almost always they thought mom would let you know. The sarcasm pointing out the impossibility of the most used excuse.
This will be brought up in the future at the right time. I will wait for the right time. Patience can pay off bigger than rashness.
But, assuming the excuse is genuine and the person making it so unaware as to not see the stupidity of it, if you imagine it happening to someone else it’s pretty damn funny. Like something out of Dumb and Dumber.
Of course without all those qualifications I guess it just sucks.
I think you’re being baited. (They’ve done this shit before, and they know it gets under your skin.)
My advice is to ignore it completely, with graciousness, as though it were no surprise whatever that you’ve been left out. Let them play their childish games.
Just remember - They suck - You rock!
That sucks.
Great username/topic correlation, though.
Did it ever occur to you that they didn’t forget, but simply didn’t want you to be there? Did you ask Mom why she didn’t mention it to you? Are you all just one big happy family? How come everyone knew about your Mom’s birthday lunch but you? Has this happened before?
Baiting is when you cast insults at someone in an effort to draw them into an argument or a fistfight. In the OP’s case, it might be considered baiting if his family dropped subtle (or not-so-subtle) hints that he was unwelcome at the birthday outing.
Instead, they actually did not invite him to an important family gathering, and then they let the event take place entirely without him. They didn’t even call him while it was in progress to ask where he was, or why he wasn’t present, or to apologize for the oversight of not inviting him.
That’s not baiting. That’s the equivalent of a punch in the face.
Can’t an email invitation have been lost? No need to assume intent when simple flakyness will do as an explanation.
When people needed to send written invitations, they took more effort, as it was a conscious thing. Usually is was more work so the job would get delegated to someone who was good at such stuff and who managed the adress file.
Nowadays, whoever had the first draft of the idea for a get-together just sends out an e-mail to whomever they have the email adresses from. In between e-mailed changes to the original plan mailed not to everybody, shared responisibility as to who is in charge of the event, vague assumptions that somebody will inform others not n the original list, and vague assumptions that that informing has been done so there is no need to send out another email so everybody getst the invitation twice (and you look like a doofus if you’re the second sender) it is quite easy to miss sending out invitations.
The nice thing to do is to email everybody and say: ""what a nice initiative, we should really do that again soon, apparently I missed it because no-one had my e-mail adress, here it is, and how have all you guys been? Followed by a little of the kind of chitchat you would have exchanged at the meeting, (our little Suzie’s joined her schools debating team) so people have a reason to email back with anything other then an embarassed “Oh god, did we forget to invite you?”
If it makes you feel any better, Harmonious Discord, my dad was invited by his sister to an event honoring my grandfather. He informed my brother, but both of them totally forgot to invite me. In fact they told me later that not just they, but also other family members had wondered at the event why I wasn’t there and that is was kind of rude of me, to just not show up, without giving notice. :mad:
But that is just how my dad and brother are. Social and family event planning is a job that, like any job, requires effort and talent and a will to do it right. If you’ve got one person like that in your extended family, you’re lucky. (Even more if you also got family members handy with plumbing, car repair, and legal/financial stuff ).
When I found out, I just called the aunt who usually knows or organizes such stuff, and I explained what happened and after some chit chat I made sure she had my e-mail addy.
And just now as I write this I realised I have changed my email adress recently, and I have to inform everyone again to prevent somethign like that happening again. :smack:
I don’t know, it sounds like a form of baiting to me. Either all these people are immature/stupid to the point of brain damage, such that they assume Mom will let everyone know to come to her surprise party, or they are deliberately leaving **Harmonious Discord **out. The fact that it happens a lot, and they managed to successfully engineer a surprise party argues for the latter.
That is *intensely *passive aggressive. If when they are called on it in a rational, calm fashion, they give the patently absurd answer that they thought Mom would tell him, I think that’s a deliberate provocation. The desired result being **Harmonious Discord **gets angry, they get to play the victim, and thereby reinforce whatever “reasons” they have for leaving him out of stuff.
Or maybe they are all just brain damaged or constantly stoned or something.
ETA: **Maastricht **may be right. As a relatively organized person it’s hard for me to comprehend being *that *flaky though.
But hey, the laundry got done!
I wouldn’t say anything to anyone - that would be taking the bait.
Take your mum out for a special birthday lunch - just the two of you.