Year Five: English Language and French Doors

My aunt is not the only one guilty of assuming a change in location would fix the family's problems. Then again, it made perfect sense at the time. By Year Five my family seemed to be quite sick of me, my sense of humor, and tendency to set Teflon pans alight, so I decided going off to a college two thousand miles away would probably make everyone a lot happier. Unfortunately, I didn't take into account that the only way my family and I would now be interacting was through communication, which all evidence suggested would be a complete disaster. Both of them still think instant messaging is just a faster form of e-mail and will write out whatever they want to say, in full, and then sign it before hitting enter. Luckily, they have since forgotten my screen name.

Verbal communication has never been met with much success in this family, either. I began to wonder if the portions of their brains involved in such exchanges had actually begun to atrophy the day before we were to move me into my dorm:

Well, last night the family and I got into a huge argument about what time to show up at orientation. I knew it started at 8, and I wanted to show up early to beat the lines, move in while it was cool, etc. After a horribly insulting exchange in which they basically told me I obviously had no clue what I was talking about and had no idea how to read a schedule, Unc said this little gem: "Wren, give me all your info and paperwork. I'm sending you to this damn college, and I have more right to it than you do." ...

...cuz he really needs to know when the date rape seminar is.

Anyway. So they wanted to leave at 7:30 to get there at 9. I wanted to leave at 6:30 to get there at 8. Of course we decided to compromise and leave at 7:30. Right. I am quoting. They said "compromise."

Communicating via phone is in some ways much worse than our face-to-face encounters. Soon after we moved into the new house, my aunt bought a series of networkable phones and stashed them in obnoxious places throughout the house. These phones had a pager system that would, at the press of a button, buzz a phone in a different room. After these were installed, instead of coming and finding anyone, she would simply pick up a phone and start buzzing about the house until the person she wanted answered. I soon became so desensitized to the noise that it would take nearly fifteen minutes for me to answer a page. Coincidentally, I also began to sleep through my alarm clock. After the paging stopped inducing a response, they installed a set of intercoms in equally obnoxious locations. Her voice has never been an easy one to tune out, so I once again started answering when summoned. Fam was quite thrilled by this development until I taught her five-year-old how to use them when I was home for Thanksgiving. They were disconnected soon after.

After all this, I really shouldn't have been surprised when I stopped being able to get ahold of them at all upon my arrival at college. I attempted once to e-mail my aunt, and was so floored by the unintelligibly of the reply that I never quite dared to ever again.

Fam-

Thought you might want to know my school schedule, so here it is:

Monday, Wednesday, Friday:
9-9:50- Chemistry 110 (Not Wed)
10-10:50- Japanese 101
11-11:50- Utopia/Dystopia
12:12-50- Biology 111

Tuesday:
9-9:50 Chemistry 110
10:10:50- Japanese 101
1-3:50- Chem 110 Lab

Thursday:
9-9:50-Chem 110
1-3:50- Bio 111 Lab

It's not as bad as I thought it would be. Having Chem AND Bio will suck, cuz it's a heavy work load, but it will be worth it. Second semester I take Calc A. Miranda, a girl from across the hall who I like a lot, has already offered to help me.

Also, we saw a hypnotist last night. It was fantastic.

This is the answer I received:

Your schedule sound heavy on one day. But, how nice to have Friday off!

Thanks for letting us hear from you. Did you get hypnotized? Sounds like fun. I have seen a hypnotized show once, it was fun.

I am going to transfer the book money to your account today. I will transfer more funds on the first.

I am going to attempt to send you some pics of the house renovation progress. We will see if I get it done right.

Glad you are having fun. Love you, Fam

I don't even know where to BEGIN.

Anyone who did not know her, after reading that, would assume that she was either originally from a different country, stoned, or recovering from severe cerebral hemorrhaging. I can assure you that she is quite American, physically sound, and on nothing but the occasional Valium as needed for air travel. We learned about the scientific method in classes the next week, and I used my newfound knowledge and the wealth of data at my disposal to develop an edgy new theory: She must be insane. I took care to ensure my findings were not circulated in familial circles, because I doubted they would be well-received.

I had been at Uni for two months before I decided that my absence from the house wasn't going to do anything to improve our relationships. The distance hadn't reduced the amount of fighting, though had reduced its duration, simply because I now had the power to hang up the phone and ignore it for the next three days. This is exactly what happened when I learned they had remodeled my room without my permission:

I ask her if it's true that they put a set of DOUBLE FRENCH DOORS where my bed goes. (they did.) Then, when I'm trying to explain to her why I wish they would have warned me, or at least asked me what I thought about it, since they told me flat out they weren't going to do anything to my room, she starts screaming at me and says "No offense, but I think I have a right to change my own home without asking you."

I went back to the house over Christmas, spent one night in the bed, woke up to a very dusty, forty-something construction worker leering at me through the French doors the next morning, and promptly executed a permanent relocation into the basement. I thought that this would keep them from messing with my walls, which was correct. Unfortunately, this meant they decided to begin messing with my furniture. The resulting Furniture Wars spanned Years Six and Seven.