There comes a point where no matter how logical, rational and convincing you are, you just gotta give in to the demands of family. They gave me lemons and now I see I was squeezing lemon juice into their eyes all along (metaphorically speaking of course). “You don’t come over enough”, “You don’t like us anymore”, “You don’t call anymore”, etc.
OK family, apparently my visits, regardless of how seldom they may be, are quickly forgotten. If I go over to your house and don’t find you, I will now leave a note on your door detailing my frustration with your absence and my relentless patience as I waited for you to come back home. I will also attach a picture that will inevitably fall short in capturing my extreme discomfort from all the sweat exuding out of sweat glands I never knew I had. In case you don’t believe me, I will take an additional picture zoomed in on my tongue so you can see the thick layer of whiteness caused by cottonmouth and dehydration that not even Gatorade could cure. All of this with my best cara de fuchi…
I have experimented a little with this and even discovered a better tactic that will save me millions of trips to their house. I will capitalize by calling family in moments when I know they’re not gonna pick up. For example, 3am, 6:58am (when they’re running late and barely showering, getting ready, or driving to work), and especially their house when they’re not home until the caller ID looks broken after only registering one phone number… my number.
Family, you have proven to me that it’s not about quality of visits, but rather the quantity of visits I make. You’d rather have me visit 10 times for 10 minutes, than 5 times for 3 hours. It reminds me of the time I duped my little cousin into trading his 10 dollar bill for the 10 nickles, 5 dimes and 15 pennies I had. He believed having more coins was better than one measly 10 dollar bill. Afterall, 30 coins is much “bigger” than his one bill or any number on it 🙂