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The official day of nagging So...sister was finally done her fourth year of school and was all set to move back home. So the other day, the Saturday, mom packed me and David into the minivan she'd borrowed from my uncle and we set off. She had told us the night before that we would be leaving at 8am. Now, I don't wake up early enough to leave the house at that time unless someone WAKES me up so David set up the alarm clock for 7:45 so he could get up and shower then he'd wake me up. Well, around 8:20, my mom is just...shouting from downstairs, telling me to wake the heck up. I get up, fuzzy as heck and wander downstairs. David's still in the shower and when I look in on my mom, she's still in her sleeping clothes so...why the heck is she yelling at me? David gets out of the shower, I wander into the bathroom, clean up, head upstairs to toss on some clothes. I don't have time to check the weather online...they don't SHOW the weather on any tv channels I get on a saturday morning and I'm feeling too lazy to wander out on my verandah to check so I just toss on a pair of jeans, a turtleneck and roll up the sleeves. I get outside...and my mom just starts in on me... By the time we actually get in the car, it's about 10 to 9am. She starts in a huff, asking "Oh does this LOOK like 8am to you??" To which I reply that when I came downstairs at almost 8:30 SHE wasn't ready to go either. She tells me that all she had to do was toss on some clothes. Then she starts in on what I'm wearing, telling me it's going to be hot, why am I wearing a sweater if we're going to be moving furniture and stuff? I'm going to be hot, etc etc. I just wave her off angrily and we get into the van. For the record, the back seats had been taken out so David ends up sitting on a blanket on the floor of the van and so we drive. The trip there takes right around two bloody hours, and by that time, both of us are sort of going stir crazy. Oh, most of the first half of the trip, my mom's ragging on me, telling me that if we had left at 8am like she had planned, we wouldn't be driving in all this traffic, etc, etc, etc. We get to London, take her and her roommate out for lunch at Kelseys (which sucked hardcore btw), and went back and got down to the business of moving her out. There were a bunch of boxes and bags and crap...those were fairly easy to move. Biggest problems was with the desk. To put it simply, David's a lot stronger than I am. So when we moved that crap down the bloody narrow stairwell, HE was usually on the bottom with the heavy end while I followed behind helping as best as I could. Simply speaking, he was doing more of the work, and it kind of showed on the ride home as we were both pretty beat. The ride home...it was just like the ride TO London except it was FAR more cramped. By the time we got home...I'm pretty sure that he was really feeling the two hour car ride with crossed legs almost the whole way. Unloading crap was hard...because the door of the trunk had freaking broken, forcing us to twist and turn everything in an attempt to get it out through the side doors which was a MAJOR hassle. Again, the hardest part was the desk...having to move it upstairs...well, have any of you BEEN to my house? The stairs are NARROW. Again, he did the bigger portion of the work and was on the bottom pushing while I was on top, pulling that bloody heavy wooden thing up to my sister's room. Eventually, the majority of the work is done and seeing as how me and him were gonna go watch the fight at one of his friend's house, we took showers in turn. I ended up going first and dressed in pretty much opposite to what I wore in the morning, it had gotten PRETTY hot in that turtleneck and jeans...so now I was wearing some VERY loose and thin green pants with a white t-shirt. I head upstairs to my room and my mom was in my sister's room talking about how to arrange things. She took ONE look at me from the doorway as I passed and said, "is THAT what you're wearing??" -.- So I changed, tossed on my even thinner Reebok pants, black Reebok t-shirt and planning to just toss on my Reebok shoes as I left...I was a walking advertisement. But I'm sitting at the comp, waiting for this guy to finish his shower so we could get outta there when my mom walks into my room, starts asking me why I always hung around with David's friends and why I always seemed to be going out with them lately. Well heck, I dunno? It just happens? It's not like I'm making a conscious decision to only go out with his friends or anything you know? We just go out. There's no real thinking involved. After a while though, I get her to drop the subject. As an afterthought, she tells me to go down to her room, grab the seperate pieces of my sisters dismantled bed and take it downstairs to the basement. So I grab the four metal railing things and the rectangular bottom part and take em downstairs and go back upstairs to wait for David to come out so we can LEAVE. He comes up, Fonze calls a while later, tells us that he's outside so we start to leave. As we're heading out the door, mom calls to us, "are you just going to leave the job half done and leave?" We look at each other thinking 'what the heck?' Turns out when I was taking the pieces of the bed to the basement, I had forgotten that these four, sort of wooden slats were part of it. There were four boards in all so I tell him to just go outside, that I'd be right out. I go to my mom's room, grab all four and lifted when she starts in on me again, telling me that they're heavy and that I should only lift one at a time. Well gee, there's a guy waiting outside, I want the heck outta the house, why would I make four trips when I can do it fine in one? I'd taken all four downstairs at once at London a few hours before that and didn't see her complaining then. So I ignore her and take all four...they're heavy and the edges of the panels are sort of sharp, I can feel them cutting into my hands somewhat but it's not like I've got a long way to go so I get it done. Slipping on my shoes about to leave, she starts in on me yet again. Wasn't I going to wear a jacket or a sweater on top of my t-shirt? Just this morning,this woman was nagging cause I wore too much and now she's nagging cause I wear too little? I explain to her ONCE that I would be in the car, then in someone's apartment, no opportunity to get cold but she tells me to take a jacket anyway. I brush her off and leave, feeling like if I don't get out of there, I'd explode. We had dinner at a korean place, was cracking up a lot of the time...Fonze was a funny guy. Went to the other guy's house to watch the UFC fight which was suitably impressive then came back in around 1am. Sat up playing games, chilling for a while before knocking out. The next night is when it just got REALLY bad. Most of the day was fine, mom went out around noon to take care of some errand and wasn't going to be back until late. Whatever, it's no big deal, we game, we chill and eat and so forth. Standard plan during the weekends for the past few MONTHS is that David stays till fairly late evening at which time, I'd drive him home. This wasn't a once in a blue moon occurrence, I'd be doing it for MONTHS and furthermore, my mom agreed to it too. Well, around 7:30, we're in my room, sis was watching some bloody retarded tv show about some up and coming young singer with a career and we were sort of watching with her when she suddenly started going on about how he should leave whie the buses were still running and that he should stop depending on us for a ride home, etc, etc, etc. I could tell he was confused...this wasn't the normal way things went but he's not about to argue with her...he gets ready, packs up his things and leaves while I'm sitting there what the heck just happened. I wander outside with him for a short distance, feeling absolutely horrible, I tell him that I'm really sorry, that I don't know what the heck is wrong with her. He says whatever, that he doesn't know either but he's just gonna try not thinking about it and leaves. Now what the HECK was that huh? I felt ashamed to be related to her cause that was just SO ridiculously cold. Mom gets home later, they both start prying into why I was withdrawn and closed up. So I tell them that it wasn't right just sending him off by bus like that. Sissy goes off on a long spiel about oh gas prices, oh why does he not want to go home so much, oh this, oh that. Well frig, first off, yeah the gas prices have been getting stupid these days but that past weekend, they'd dropped from mid 90's to high 70's so that's nothing but a CHEAP excuse. And even with the high prices, I'd been doing driving the guy home for months so of course, he's going to start sort of relying on it, seeing it as a matter of course. For another, it's not like he lives an hour away on the highway or anything, driving him home and coming back takes me around 30-40 minutes tops so it's not like I'm breaking the bank or throwing away my entire evening taking him home you know? Last but not least...my sense of right and wrong had been HORRIBLY offended by what she did. Regardless of the price in money, the time it would have taken...just the day before he came with us to MOVE her home. Why did he come? He had told me not to include him when my sis was moving back home and I agreed, it wasn't his burden to take on BUT...the weekend before, my mom VERY BLATANTLY hinted that she wanted him to come and help and that's why he came this weekend knowing full well how much work would be done. He endured a bit over four HOURS in a car, ended up doing the heavier portion of the work when we were there and when we got home without complaint. The VERY least thing that we could have done was drive him home at the end of the weekend but no thanks to my sister, that got all messed up. I'd pay the guy if I could just to assauge my own conscience but I know that he'd laugh in my face if I tried to give him money. I felt HORRIBLE watching him walk away after my own sister had just...blatantly ignored ALL of the rules of conduct and just pretty much kicked him out. She broke Code. The Code isn't something that can really be put into words as it exists more in feelings, the small promptings of guilt and stems from the sense of Right and Wrong. Putting it into simplest terms though, if someone does something for you, you do something for them back. At the very bottm, that's what it boils down to. If someone gives you something, pays for your movie/meal/drinks, does you a favor, sometime, somehow, you DO SOMETHING IN RETURN. David did my sister, my mother and even myself a HUGE favor by giving up his time and strength to help my sister move back home...and to just send him away like that with pretty much nothing to show for it just...horribly offended me. Well screw my sis and screw my mom, I'll do something back for him. this deal we have with my cussing and his smoking...with the dollar penalties and all, he's pretty much $100 in the hole right now and it's only been about a month. When it comes time...when we're supposed to switch our debts, I'm not taking his money :P I won't let on anything now...so for all intents and purposes, for HIM, he's still giving up a dollar everytime he burns a cig, but when it comes time to pay up, I'm not letting him pay me, as payment for the horrible sense of injustice last night if nothing else... |