My grandpa is getting REALLY GOOD at infuriating me lately.

Today he sent me an e-mail, a forward, titled "Wake Up!" Generally I don't open his forwards because I know they will be close-minded, right-wing propaganda or "If you are not ashamed of the Gospel, forward this to all your contacts." But I was in an e-mail program that automatically gives a preview of an e-mail when I clicked on "Wake Up!" to mark it read.

It said,

"Wake up, people! Since when do we honor those who want to kill us?"

It had a picture of a new stamp that the USPS is apparently coming out with, that has Arabic writing on it.

It was an instant inflammatory for me. I fired back an e-mail to Grandpa that said, "I tutor Muslim refugees who, I assure you, do not want to kill us. They just want to learn how to live in America." And a bit more about how I don't think that every Muslim in America has clandestine plans to destroy our country from the inside out. "Culture-consciousness" was in my head too, but I was too angry to think of a better way to write that, since my grandpa is one of those people that apparently hates diversity and different cultures. I swear he's gotten worse in his old age. Or maybe it's just because I see the world differently now.

I liked my use of "clandestine plans." :)

Anyway. That's only the most recent incident; I was going to write about the weekend we spent with them too. Thankfully it wasn't bullets right and left, but there were two instances where I raised my voice in conversation with him.

He wants me to take Spanish. I swear it's just his way of flying darts at all the Mexicans "invading" our land. Excuses to say, "Because there are so many of those stupid Mexicans here..." You get the picture.

We've had this conversation before, on my last visit. I told him I'd think about it. Apparently he heard I'd do it, because he started right into me. "You should use a computer program to learn Spanish." At first I just tried to be nice and evasive about it: "I'm not really interested in that right now." He went into one of his rants-thinly-disguised-as-practical-advice to his eldest granddaughter. "I thought you said you were going to start taking Spanish!" he said, raising his voice at me.

"I said I'd THINK about it! I don't have a lot of motivation to do that right now!" I finally said, exasperated.

"Well, I'm trying to motivate you!"

"I KNOW!"

At that, Grandpa laughed and turned the whole thing into a joke. I suppose that means I won that round. Honestly. How do you deal with this man? He's totally passive-aggressive. My whole family is, and that isn't even an exaggeration. And Stephen wonders why I'm so hard to deal with.

The one exception is my aunt Glena. Gail is pretty good at being direct, too, but Glena is the best at tactful directness, if that's even possible. How I wish I lived closer to her. Maybe I should start writing to her in addition to my two grandmas...

That's the only incident I remember right now from that weekend, and anyway I'm just getting angry thinking about how much I disagree with my grandpa. UGH. This was a nice opportunity to vent out the frustration though. On with life...

-Stephanie

P.S. On another note, good grief, I'm almost at 900 entries!

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