DON'T MESS WITH GRANDMA

My Grandparents used to bicker a  lot, but when a friend said  to my Grandmother, ‘“Your husband can be such a pain.”  My Grandmother replied, “You are correct, but no one has the right to complain about my husband except me!”

Families can be very complicated. As George Carlin said “The other night, I ate in a real nice family restaurant.  Every table had an argument going.”

When I taught Sunday School, I asked my class, “How do you think we can get Peace on Earth?” No one had a good idea. Then, I suggested that it begins with us. “First,” I said, “You have to have peace in your own family, and then make peace with your neighbors, and then they should make peace with their neighbors etc.” After I finished, one boy raised his hand and said, “It will never work!” “Why?” said I, and he said, “Because I hate my brother!”

Wayne Huizenga said, “Some family trees bear an enormous crop of nuts.”

Shakespeare  gave us the Montagues and the Capulets. Romeo, a Montague goes to a party given by the Capulets. He falls in love with Juliet, and in spite of a deadly feud between the two families, the two get married in secret. Cousins on both sides keep killing each other.  Finally, the ill-fated couple can’t take it anymore and commit suicide. That was before marriage counseling was invented.

In my hometown, there was a couple who lived in her Mother’s house. The two women did not speak to each other EVER! When asked about the situation, the husband said, “It’s peaceful. They never argue.”   

It’s always a test if you want to spend a holiday with a relative. Dear friends of mine scheduled a cruise for Christmas, so they wouldn’t have to put up with the sap from the family tree.

The Hatfields and McCoy’s were a perfect blend of chaos and dysfunction. That bitter, murderous family feud between the two families—one from West Virginia and the other from Kentucky—lasted from 1863 to 1891, and some lawsuits and trials continued until 2000. However, on June 14, 2003 in Pikeville, Kentucky, they officially declared a truce between the families, and began cashing in on their story.

After an  acrimonious divorce, my friend’s husband refused to speak to her even at family functions.  He even shunned her on his deathbed. Boy! did he get even with her!

I’m not sure if we will ever reach peace in the world, but maybe we can achieve some form of peace in our families.  First of all, it’s a good idea to develop selective hearing, and then to consider this question:  “Would you rather be happy or would you rather be right?”

Esther Blumenfeld