Rattled

A couple of things got me rattled in the last couple of days, and since there's no poker to discuss I thought I'd discuss them here:

1. We had Passover dinner the other night; we call it a seder. The holiday is meant to perpetuate the myth that the Jews en masse were enslaved to the Pharaoh (which one? History quite conveniently doesn't recount) until the Almighty, with outstretched arm and a recipe for bad food, delivered us from wickedness and cast us into the desert for forty goddamn years. Utter bullshit, a mile wide and ten miles long; but I digress.

Anyway the way it was is that the two patriarchs of our larger family sat at either side of the table; my Uncle Alan at one end and my father at the other. Well obviously the old man isn't around to take his seat so it's kind of up for grabs. Tootsie asked if I wanted to sit there, and pointed to the seat. I said that really, I'd rather not; it's tough enough being around my family during a holiday that my father used to attend (despite the fact that he HATED Passover) without making it even more emotionally charged by taking his seat. If it were up to me I'd leave his place empty but it's not my house. Anyway, like I said, I mentioned I'd rather not sit there.

At which point my aunt, my mother's sister, the woman who besides my mom was more responsible for my upbringing than any other, turned around (she was directly in front of me), adopted a sarcastic tone, rolled her eyes and said, "why? because your father used to sit there?"

"Yes," I replied, as levelly as I could, not wishing to start a fight.

To her credit, she turned back around without another word, perhaps realizing that she had acted like a flaming douchebag. But I was shocked, stunned, and incredibly disappointed that she should act so cavalierly about as sensitive a matter as this. She knows well that Dad passing threw me a curveball I wasn't ready for; for her to act like such a cunt really bothers me.

2. I was driving down the street and was stopped at a red light. The car in front of me took an ill-advised right on red and got smashed by a courtesy van - just munched. Both airbags deployed, a little girl in the passenger seat was crying, broken glass, twisted metal, just a pretty ugly scenario all around. A cop was coincidentally less than a block away; I saw with my own two eyes his acknowledgement of the accident and his taking his sweet fucking time getting there. I was already well past the scene and could see that he had yet to even get in his cruiser. What if someone was bleeding? What if someone was really hurt? Is it too much to ask for a little god damned hustle when responding to an accident? You can dial your shit back a little bit when you get there and assess the situation but Christ on his cross, come on boy, hustle it up.

3. Even here, everything seems to be kind of winding down. Since black Friday the usual suspects are posting less frequently than is their custom, and most posts are bemoaning the lack of pokerosity through the tubes here. I fear this is the beginning of a slow abandonment of the family, and that is not a particularly happy thought.

Until next time, please, I don't think I can stand to be any more rattled.