My girlfriend’s sister is home for a visit. I’m going to refer to her as Williamina Dean, because it makes me smile. The relationship between my girlfriend and Williamina isn’t so much oil and water, as it is oil and a blowtorch.
Basically, you can play with both safely for hours, but by the end of dinner someone’s going to have a lit blowtorch up their ass.
It took all of an hour before things were said that will just add to the mountain of things said between the two of them that can never be taken back.
I’m never sure why their behaviour, and the resulting reactions of fury and great wrath are ever a surprise to them. The last time Williamina came for a visit I actually predicted, nearly to the minute, how long it would take for the niceties to devolve into screaming.
This time we were all watching my girlfriend’s oldest son (McQueen) play his first T-ball game of the season. My girlfriend and I, along with our son, Guy Fawkes, were there. My girlfriend’s mother (Marybeth Tinning), as well as Williamina and her husband were there. And so were my girlfriend’s ex-husband and Allanah, his girlfriend.
Any time my girlfriend is forced to share a space with her ex-husband automatically raises her stress level to “approaching maximum”. He’s done everything he can over the past three years to not pay his court ordered child support, he regularly misses his days with his son, he lies, steals and is a general all-around fucktard of the highest measure.
I stood with my girlfriend for a little while, but she wanted photos of McQueen playing baseball, so I left. Which was a massive mistake.
I basically left her alone with her mother, her sister and her ex-husband. None of whom are the kind of people you rescue from the shark.
Williamina started pushing almost right away. Just little passive aggressive remarks, the kind you want to respond to with a shooting, but can only do so with a shrug.
One of the most common tactics her family uses against my girlfriend is to remark on her fitness as a parent. Last week Marybeth actually told my girlfriend “you’re not a good mother”. This time, while she was sitting on her perch on the bleachers, Williamina started telling my girlfriend how to properly raise McQueen.
Then Williamina noticed our son staring at Allanah, the ex-husband’s girlfriend.
And Williamina said… “Look at him stare, I’ll bet Alannah would make a great mom for Little Fawkes.”
My girlfriend left, and walked over to where I was taking photos. T-ball, for what it’s worth, is the most boring activity ever. It’s fun watching the kids miss bases, pile on each other trying to get the ball, and even cute as hell the first time a toddler-sized girl gets to first base.
But, after the initial eight minutes, it’s just stupid.
After the game, as we were leaving, I was going to tell my girlfriend what I thought about T-ball, but she spoke up first about how Marybeth was so adamant McQueen not play T-ball anymore, she was actually telling him it was bad for him, and that his mommy was wrong to let him play.
I’ve known families where one or both parents were raging alcoholics and / or drug addicts, and who had been relegated to living in the basement, which functioned better as a group.
Marybeth Tinning and Williamina Dean rank among the most prolific women serial killers of children of all time.
Williamina lived in New Zealand and in 1895 was convicted of killing three kids, but was suspected in dozens of others. She adopted kids to work on her farm, but killed them soon afterwards, and collected the government cheques for herself. She remains the only woman ever put to death in New Zealand.
Marybeth murdered eight children, seven she gave birth to, and one she adopted. The murders took place from 1972 until 1985. All of her children died from being smothered. She has never shown any remorse, and is eligible for parole in 2013.
McQueen is a race car in the animated movie, Cars.
Guy Fawkes is the name my baby boy will adopt, just a few months before simultaneously blowing up the capital buildings of every major country on earth. Then we will be free to roam without diapers.
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The only words that go through my head are CUNTS. As someone who has left most of her relatives (blood and otherwise) behind because they just can’t play nice…she needs to do that. That is NOT love, and is why I don’t believe any of the pithy sayings about putting up with family. Treat me like shit? Not having it. Your girlfriend deserves better, you deserve better and first and foremost, your kids deserve better.
GAH. It’s only 9am and now I’m cranky for you.
Shaming someone is one of the worst form of abuses ever…And it takes a lot of conscious work to realize first when one is being shamed and even though on a rational basis the target knows the other person is fcked up, it still doesn’t hurt less. It’s interesting, that I’ve been reading a lot of books on shame and one of the hottest triggers for the hurtful below the belt comments that targets for a woman about their parenting skills. I have the shaming triggers from my family that while are different than your wife’s triggers, I understand the extreme pain…I’m glad she has you as a support system because her whole family really sound absolutely horrible and dangerous to your wife’s very heart and soul. There’s a lot of good books about “shame” out there that have helped me a lot.
…why exactly did she chose to hang out with her family?
Hi Felix, it’s been a while. If you mean this time, as opposed to all the other times, it was because Williamina and her brood were in town for a few days of visiting and killing.
We would have preferred not to be with them for more than a coffee but, because this was McQueen’s first T-ball game, we had to be there, which meant everyone knew Little Fawkes would be there as well, which doubled their incentive. So the extended family had an excuse to be out in the sunlight.
Basically it came down to:
1. We had to be there to support McQueen
2. We have no legal right to bar the rest of the family from being outside.