Two old biddies

This is going to sound horribly ungrateful, but my parents have invited me to go with them on their ski trip, and they are driving me up the wall!  I really don’t know how I’m going to spend another hour with them being civil.  Their very company is like watching Eddie Murphy movies or scratching your fingernails down a blackboard.  Or both, simultaneously.  I don’t even know how to start explaining it. 

They’re like a couple of senile old biddies in a nursing home.  Painfully slow, mentally and physically.  And so utterly deprived of any kind of excitement or social interaction that they’ll insist on spending an hour telling you about their last trip to the local shops.  In a tone of naiive overexcitement, like a child describing their new puppy’s latest mischief. 

The odd thing is, Dad is only 60, Mum 56, but they’ve been this way as long as I can remember.  It’s just painful, when you’re powerless to speed things up, or do something else useful while waiting, watching them move so slowly, so incompetently.  Every little decision requires a discussion.  Every movement happens at a somnolent pace.  And all this time they chatter, chatter, chatter.  Utterly inane chatter.  Everything they say they repeat.  Mum tells you something Dad said.  Then Dad tells you again.  And then they tell Illyusha when he rings.  What was so important or entertaining?  The details of how they went to a shop and bought an item of clothing.  It makes you want to tear your hair out, really. 

I’ve turned down offers to accompany them on holidays before.  I starting to wonder if I should have turned down this one too.  I haven’t skied since I was in school, and there’s no way I could afford it myself.  My thought was that as soon as we’re on the slopes, I can go my own way and see them only at the end of the day.  Now I’m dreading the trip there and back with them.  I suppose this is the real reason people buy portable music players.  Not because it’s wildly entertaining, but because it blocks something out. 

I’m starting to remember why I had such self esteem issues as a child, about my family.  They’re just not the sort of people you’d want to associate with.  And when you aren’t making friends at school, and your awful family are the only ones who will associate with you, you start feeling like you must be abnormal. 

The standard solution to this is to meet them only for Christmas, Mothers Day, and maybe Fathers Day, and have nothing to do with them the rest of the year.  The standard solution is looking not too bad at the moment.  If it wasn’t for the fact that they buy me things and give me free food, I probably would have kept away from them.  Well, I guess I’ll learn something from this trip.  Hopefully I’ll find out whether I really can stand them or not. 

I do feel pretty shitty though, letting them spend money on me and then snapping at them when I can’t stand it any more.  There’s so little communication.  I don’t know how they feel about it or what their motives are.  Sometimes it feels like I’m talking to a wall.  There’s no reaction, so how can it matter what I say?  Oh well.  My problem, not theirs.  If they find me intolerable, it’s up to them to do something about it.  My problem is to decide what I’m going to do.