Do Your Relatives Embarass You?

Oh god, where do I start.

The joy of being a rather underdeveloped teenager, standing in the changing room in a store trying on a top and having your mother loudly say to the shop assistant "well she needs a size 8 because shes VERY SMALL IN THE CHEST" is hideous.

101 suchlike stories... *mutter*...

Countless times for me, too. One this very night. Embarassment and anger for the callousness of my clan. Why do I get together with them? I know better but the sense of duty of something hard to shake. However, I may have to pass up these reunions or I do believe I will go insane.

no not any more.
they are whanau ( family ) and their behaviour isnt my responsibility anymore, not now that im 'all grown up" and so are they.
it never was my responsibility but when you are younger it feels that way i guess.

i did used to be embarrassed about my dad, because he was so strict he would do insane things in front of my friends when i was a teenager. but im over that now.

i think i am entering a phase of 'loving them anyway'.
must be an age thing ( i turn 40 in december ).
a year ago i was ready to fuck em off altogether, but not through embarrassment, more through anger at their seeming idiocy.

i dont live close enough to any of them anyway, to be subjected to their daily behaviour. ignorance is good perhaps?

I love my parents dearly, but I feel bad for my Dad when they come to visit me in Melbourne (being a more multicultural city than the one they live in and dad is from the bush), and he calls asians "dimsims" and jews "hymies" and he honestly means nothing nasty AT ALL, but it still hurts, thinking he's so blinkered to how RUDE that is. Oh lordy.

for me... today... really was extreme anger for their ambarrassing stupidity... I guess a great boil over from years of putting up with the crap ... I do believe that if I spend any more time with them my head will explode like a watermelon full of dynamite. It is certainly a benchmark in my life. I know that whatever relationship I had with them in the past has been forever changed.

Thats sad to hear :(

I used to be positively mortified by my mother's laugh ... loud and full and not repressed and from the belly and very unique. I would cringe when out with her and she'd laugh ... sometimes people would turn to see who was making such sounds (or so I perceived at the time). Once I had a classmate tell me that he knew my mother was at the movies the night before because he heard her laugh from far back in the audience.

Then, at some point in my late teens, it no longer seemed like that big of a deal. And then, when my mother had cancer and I realized that at some point her laugh will be silent, I came to love the sound of her joy. Now I hope that someday I will laugh as she does.

Well, let me see -- my family was basically perfectly portrayed in the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding, except in the movie they were known as the Portokalos family. My family's big and crazy and loud and "ethnic" and not at all "sophisticated" or especially "cultured", and sure, they may embarass (or is it embarrass?) me at times, but man, they do add some flavor to my little universe, and, like Toula, I love them all.

(There's even an old woman in my family who's almost exactly like the crazy, Turk-hating grandmother. I kid you not.)

Whatever part it is of a person's mind which helps them know what sort of company it's appropriate to say certain things/tell certain jokes around, one of my dad's sisters was born without.

yeah mum and dad, they used to embarass me. but now i love them in all their gauche splendour.

Funnily enough, my relatives never did embarrass me that much, as they knew how to conduct themselves in public. Ask any Caribbean family: no matter how loud they get at home, they know how to give support in front of others.

I do love my relatives, but also have learned how to take them with a long distance grain of salt.