Death of a Family

I bet they would go bowling!

My family is DEAD to me! Well some of my paternal cousins are at least. My brother is the only person who loves me (in addition to my parents, granny, aunts and uncles).

We all used to be so close. Hanging with the fantastic Cee's family recently made me realize how much I miss family get togethers. Honestly we haven't had a good family get together (aside from the reunion which most of them don't attend) since my Uncle Larry got saved. He used to be a drunk and host family gatherings for every holiday. Then one day he got saved and became holier than thou. That was the end of the parties.

Unfortunately there are so many of us, so no one ever wants to host a gathering. Over the years our get togethers have happened less and less frequently. And that made me sad. Now I will be the first to admit my family irks me a lot of times. But I do occasionally want to be around them in spite of their chides that I've gained weight, sound white, need a man and so on.

It seemed like a good idea for us all to hang out one weekend. So the wannabe activity coordinator in me decided to plan a bowling night a couple of weeks ago for all the cousins 18-49. No children were allowed because I just can't be bothered. I shared my idea with several cousins and they were all excited about the outing and "cleared" their schedule accordingly. Later I sent a message out to all the cousins, and they too were equally enthused with the idea.

The day before and day of I sent out reminders to everyone. Folks were still excited. I even saw one cousin who said, "We'll see you there tonight." By the time 8  p.m. rolled around I could barely contain my excitement.

And guess who was there? NO ONE! NOT A BLASTED COUSIN! Only my dear little brother was there. We waited, and waited, and waited some more. Finally hunger got the better of us and we left to eat. One cousin did decided to grace us with his presence at dinner almost two hours later. He's on life support. The rest of them, except for Cousin Adam who had to work, are DEAD TO ME!

Disappointed does not even begin to describe how I felt. The only reason I came to Jacksonville that weekend was for bowling night. I could have stayed home and saved my gas if they weren't going to bother to show up. What's worse is the fact that two of the people who were the loudest in saying they would be there didn't show up. And one didn't even bother to answer my phone call that night. DEAD! JUST DEAD!

I heard through the grapevine a couple of people couldn't get anyone to watch their children. Poppycock! Any other time they want to do something they can find a babysitter. And I might have been inclined to change the event to allow children if someone had bothered to say it would be an issue. No one did. So they're still DEAD!

I am too through with all my cousins and won't be saying spit, spaghetti or sit down to them for a hot minute.  I quit as family activities coordinator! They'll know when I attend another family event because they'll be the ones planning it. Until then they shall remain DEAD!