My aunt texted me this morning to let me know she invited my uncle, my dad’s younger brother, to dinner with us on Monday. But since his eye sight is getting poor, he’s not comfortable driving in the dark. She asked me if I could do lunch time on Monday instead. When I told my mom this, she got really angry and said if dinner didn’t work, then dinner would not work; she did not want me to agree to Monday lunch so last minute. My mom sees this as my aunt “controlling” the situation by making lots of last minute changes, not informing everyone, but expecting everyone to comply with her random whims. I do think it’s ridiculous and extremely dysfunctional of my aunt, as I recently had this happen to me personally when she tried to invite her random JW friends to my house for dinner, and I refused.

So I told my aunt that we’d stick to an earlier dinner on Monday, and she said it was fine. This whole time, she’s texting my uncle back and forth, partly copying and pasting texts from me in between. Somehow along the way, my uncle got confused and thought that it was not Monday dinner, but that Sunday night dinner he was supposed to drive up to the city for. So he rang our doorbell at 3:30pm today and said he was going to dinner at my aunt’s place with me that evening. Unfortunately, I had to correct him and tell him that there would be no dinner, and that it was actually tomorrow… as in, Monday.

My uncle, for lack of better words, doesn’t really have the best manners. He will show up at people’s homes without notice, completely unannounced, expecting them to be home. When I say “people,” I really mean my parents or my aunt. In addition, he rarely takes the initiative to invite anyone to a meal unless it’s just one of his nephews or his niece (that’s me!) 1:1. When it’s any wider family, like my parents or my aunts coming, he expects that someone else will foot the bill. In my entire 40-plus years knowing him, I’ve never seen him offer to pay the family dinner bill a single time. And what’s worse: if my aunt is hosting, he will occasionally do his due diligence as a good guest and bring an appetizer dish or dessert. If my parents host, he will never bring anything — ever. So when he scrolled through his text message thread with my aunt and realized he misread it, he said to me, “Oh, well. My mistake! I guess that just means I’m having dinner with you all tonight!”

Oohhhhh. Trouble.

My mom was not happy about this; it was written all over her face. In fact, I could see the steam coming out of her ears when it dawned on her that he was not leaving the house upon realizing his mistake. She said to him a few times, “We have a dinner to go to and need to leave soon.” But him being him, my uncle took zero cues that this meant HE was not invited, and instead took the liberty of walking down to Geary where the restaurant was along with us. As Chris said, all of this could have been addressed if any of them had any balls to just say that he wasn’t invited, but of course, neither of my parents was going to be that confrontational. And I sure as hell was not getting involved. All of us walked down to Geary together, with my uncle and my dad chatting away as though it was no big deal. My mom walked slightly ahead of them, extremely pissed. And way ahead were Chris, Kaia, and me. At the restaurant, we met with my mom’s friend, who we had originally planned this dinner with all along.

At the end of the meal, as I expected, my mom paid the bill. My uncle never offered to cover even his own share of the meal. He said his usual effusive thank-you to her at the end, and then we walked back to the house. My uncle offered to drive my mom’s friend home so she didn’t have to take the bus as planned, and we said good night.

And that evening back at the house, my mom made random passive aggressive to aggressive comments to me, and I just said nothing. I know in her head, she probably blames me for this misunderstanding happening, which resulted in her paying for my uncle’s dinner, which she hates. But maybe if she were just more confrontational, she could have just flat out told him he wasn’t welcome to join. That is in no way on me.

My dad thought it was funny. When I was in the kitchen with him later in the evening, he chuckled and said to me, “Well, that was a misunderstanding. Not sure how that happened!” My mom did not laugh and scowled.

Welp. It’s just another day in the lives of the dysfunctional family I am part of.