Pretty Mad Sibling
I wrote a while back about how my malfunctioning thyroid made me difficult to live with despite my deeply held belief that I'm a pretty nice guy. I and my wife are both fortunate that hyperthyroidism can be controlled fairly easily with medication, which enables me to be the good person I like to think I am. Women in general, however, are not so fortunate in the area of mood-altering biological phenomena.
Back in the early '90s, I interrupted my college education (a long story that I won't go into right now) and moved into the house of The Happy Father and Stepfamily for a couple of years. One year, I decided to celebrate Father's Day by treating the whole family (my dad, stepmother, 14-year-old stepbrother, and 18-year-old stepsister) to some culture and taking them to see The Will Rogers Follies (a Tony Award-winning musical based on the life of Will Rogers) at the Music Hall at Fair Park. After church, we all piled into the van to drive into Dallas for lunch and the show. It didn't take long for me to realize that it was not a good day for my stepsister to be near other people. As far as she was concerned, every comment, gesture, and eye-blink perpetrated by anyone but herself invariably revealed a deep and abiding stupidity and/or rudeness in the perpetrator. She had moods like that fairly regularly, and I was pretty sure I knew why, though I thought it wise to never try confirming my hypothesis. I just knew that on days such as that one, it was best not to talk unless absolutely necessary and to make a policy of forgetting everything that happened once a new day dawned.
I managed to get through lunch and the show without incurring any significant wrath from the stepsister. After the show, we were all standing in the lobby waving to the performers and talking amongst ourselves when I, stupidly, said, "Hmm. I'm kind of hungry." I have no idea why I felt the need to say that, or how I thought I would get away with it, but as soon as the words left my mouth I knew I had done wrong and braced myself. My stepsister looked at me and, with a tone more hostile than any she had ever directed toward me, said, "Well, if you had ordered more food at lunch you wouldn't be hungry right now." She turned away, and I breathed a sigh of relief at having gotten off so light.
Unfortunately, my stepbrother had not had enough life experience to understand the situation. So he looked at his sister with an expression of utter confusion and said, "Holy crap! What's wrong with you today?" Before she could answer, my dad said, "Oh, you know. She's got PMS." It all happened too quickly. I didn't have more than a split second to choose whether to cover my stepbrother's mouth or punch my dad in the stomach to prevent them from speaking, or even to dive behind a pillar to shield myself from the explosion that followed.
Looking back on it, I think I can excuse my stepbrother for his ignorance. He was only 14, after all. My father, though, should have known better. He should have known the five iron-clad rules regarding the condition of certain days:
- Do not talk.
- If you talk, do not argue.
- If you argue, do not verbally diagnose the source of the problem.
- If you verbally diagnose the source of the problem, do not do it around innocent bystanders who should have eaten more at lunch.
- Silently repeat Rules No. 3 and 4 to yourself all day long.
Having some distance from The Incident, I find it kind of funny. Now that I think about it, though, I should state for the record that it has nothing at all to do with marriage. Certainly not with my marriage.
Which reminds me, I should also emphasize that this memory bubbled into my consciousness today for absolutely no reason whatsoever.
I should probably stop writing now.
