Thread by @apark2453

All right, R is off work and can confirm all of this. I'll preface by saying: I definitely got heated after someone suggested I get the gun I didn't know they had and shoot myself in the head.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

1/

https://twitter.com/apark2453/status/1336058021059825665

First, to set the stage: both R and I were a bit leery of it to begin with. We'd had get-togethers and in all of the recent ones where were a lot of "those goddamned millennials" talk.

2/

With "millennial" meaning "anyone younger than them" since apparently it covered everyone from school administrators probably only a decade my mother's junior to my younger brother's (currently a college Senior) classmates.

Obviously that's not quite right.

3/

But don't worry, we're the "good" millennials who aren't lazy good-for-nothings.

So we were already prepared for *some* kind of awkward ranting.

Dinner approaches.

And I'm going to now caution people that I have... strange eating habits.

4/

I think everyone does on some level, there's something about how they eat what they eat that others find off-putting (R squishes ketchup into eggs in a way that I can't watch, I put ketchup on macaroni and cheese in a way that used to make @mpark6288 gag when we were kids)

5/

Knowing this, I try to restrain myself. The beef is pretty... bad. It wasn't anything about the cooking, it was just not a great cut and meat can be kind of random anyway. So I get the Worcestershire sauce.

But I can't get it to soak up into the meat.

6/

So, I put it in a shot glass.

Bite of meat, sip of Worchestershire. Inelegant, but gets the job done.

My mom begins to freak out. R attempts to mediate (yes, it's weird, just don't watch).

Whatever you think this is about to spiral into, think weirder.

7/

At this point my stepfather declares that if I'm going to do "that" he should go get the gun they have upstairs so I can shoot myself in the head.

Regardless of how off-putting the Worchestershire in a shot glass is, we've gone all the way to 11.

8/

I'm... honestly stunned. I don't know how long I sat there trying to process "what the actual, serious, genuine fuck just happened", but apparently something about the awkward silence of "just suggested I kill myself" lent itself to a rant about "toxins" in Worchestershire.

9/

Some incredulous sound came out of my mouth, apparently, because he felt inspired to repeatedly and loudly invoke that he was the only person there who "works in the medical field".

For the sake of how ridiculous this situation is, imagine what you think his job was.

10/

For context, if @DomSkyeRN told me "sipping Worchestershire out of a shot glass while eating meat means I should kill myself" my response would be "what the *fuck* is in Worchestershire?"

His job "in the medical field"? Head of a sales team for a medical supply company.

11/

At this point I'll admit I got irked. Being told to kill myself is a bit much, and as a 29-year-old licensed attorney being lectured about "toxins" was a bit much.

I slammed the remainder of the shot glass back like two fingers of whiskey and slammed the glass on the table.

12/

This made... basically no one happy.

So at this table with my wife, my mother, stepfather, little brother, and two friends of the family, we sit in stony silence eating rubbery meat.

I *probably* could have muddled through and just left. In hindsight maybe I should have.

13/

It's at this point I lean in close to R to get a sense of how completely off-base I am. I'm stubborn, I'm not exactly humble, so in a situation like this I don't always have the best sense of whether I'm on the side of the angels.

R is simply flabbergasted.

14/

But she confirms (a) he really did say that, and (b) my behavior wasn't really *that* atrocious.

So I decided that fences needed mending. Specifically in the form of "I'm probably owed an apology for being told to kill myself."

Any guesses on how that goes?

15/

Short version: he once again invoked his medical expertise. I retorted that's like saying a janitor at a hospital has medical expertise because they work in the medical field.

And thus ensued the shouting back and forth, and orders to leave their house.

16/

As we were packing up to leave, he kept shouting that "no one here supports you", while R was standing right next to me. *That* was the part she took umbrage at. Because that either means she's not a person, or they think she's supporting me out of wifely duty.

17/

Anyone who knows R can attest that "blindly supporting me out of wifely duty" isn't really her thing.

And that was basically it. I tried one more time to text "hey, here's why telling me to kill myself was kind of shitty", got a "thanks for explaining how you feel".

18/

R is actually *more* mad now than she was. Mom and her remained FB friends, and when R posted on FB about her being diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis earlier this year it really bugged her that mom didn't reach out at all despite having seen it.

19/

And... that's it. Kind of anticlimactic since my current strategy is "eventually I win the argument by default". The only other time I can remember them reaching out was to complain about when we got doxxed, which is fair since that was my fault and unfortunate.

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