Just in my neighborhood alone I am surrounded by a few very selfish people. The neighbors behind us love to race their muscle cars at all hours of the night. The neighbors next door to use had the Town put a up a “No Parking from 11pm-6am Fri, Sat, Sun from May to September” sign because she doesn’t like anyone parking in front of her house. The Town came around asking people if they wanted those signs because there used to be collection of bars about ½ mile away and some people in the neighborhood didn’t want people parking in front of their houses. Let me just state this one point. Never once in the 30 years those bars were open did anyone ever park on our street to walk there. In fact the only people who ever parked in that one spot at night were my parents. We also have another neighbor who lit fireworks on July 4th for over 2 hours. I probably should mention I live in a small, residential area across the street from a Town park that has water on two sides. A very small community with lots of trees and houses. Pretty much your typical quiet, suburban neighborhood. But that is not what the bulk of my diary will be about.
Follow below to find out about some extremely selfish people in my own family.
But First, A Word From Our Sponsor:
Top Comments recognizes the previous day's Top Mojo and strives to promote each day's outstanding comments through nominations made by Kossacks like you. Please send comments (before 9:30pm ET) by email to topcomments@gmail.com or by our KosMail message board. Just click on the Spinning Top™ to make a submission. Look for the Spinning Top™ to pop up in diaries posts around Daily Kos.
Make sure that you include the direct link to the comment (the URL), which is available by clicking on that comment's date/time. Please let us know your Daily Kos user name if you use email so we can credit you properly. If you send a writeup with the link, we can include that as well. The diarist poster reserves the right to edit all content.
Please come in. You're invited to make yourself at home! Join us beneath the doodle...
|
Last Saturday we celebrated the 1st Anniversary of the opening our store. We had events all day. Everything from a magician and a face-painter to a harmonica group and a barbershop quartet. You would think this would be a day where a bunch of our friends and family would make an appearance to help us celebrate. You’d be wrong. With the exception of one cousin from my father’s side and a few friends who live in the area, none of our family or close friends showed up. And it wasn’t as if we hadn’t announced the date for the event early enough for people to save the date because we decided on the date in April. I am not really sure what word would accurately describe this, but I will go with pathetic. But truth be told, pathetic doesn’t really describe it because I can count on one hand the number of times these people who did not show up on Saturday have been in the store since we officially opened last year. The reason I can do that is many of them have never set foot in the store even once.
Before I list some of the times just in the past year we have figured out ways to make sure at least two of us (there are three in my family) attended events they were having, I want to state that none of these people own their business and most of them work in places where they work a standard 5 day work week and it is known that they all get plenty of vacation time. We’ve attended these events while trying to get a store up and running including having to attend trades shows and events to promote our business.
We have been to three birthday parties, numerous bbq’s, 2 bris’, (for those who don’t know what a bris is, it a Jewish ritual that occurs 8 days after a baby boy is born when he is circumcised), a Thanksgiving dinner and a Passover Seder which has to be one of the most selfish things to ever happen to us.
Ever since my grandmother died a few years ago, we have been hosting the family Passover Seder at our house because my aunt hosts Thanksgiving dinner. This year because of the store and the fact that our manager is also Jewish, we needed to work out which night we needed the manager to work so we could host the Seder at our house. About two to three weeks before Passover, my mother and her sister worked it out that we would do our Seder on the second night of Passover. Because of that, we gave our manager the first night of Passover off for him to have Seder with his family. Everything was all set. About a week before Passover, my aunt decided without any warning that she no longer wanted to come down for Seder because it was too much for them to travel down to us on Friday night when they have to have Easter Dinner (she married and Italian man) on Sunday. So instead of us hosting any Seder, they would do Seder and on the first night of Passover no less. They never even took into any consideration that we couldn’t do that because we had given our manager that night off. Because my cousin, her daughter, and her husband were coming in from San Diego for Passover, they essentially guilted us into coming because they said they didn’t know if my cousin was coming home any other time and we might not get to see them until Thanksgiving. (Not true) Against my wishes, we closed the store for the night and went up for Seder.
This is just the most recent examples of how selfish my family and friends can be. I have travelled to visit people all over the country on many occasions, let alone just making the effort to call to talk. I couldn’t even give you a range of how often I have done so in the past. Rarely has anyone invited my family to events they are holding or just come to visit. Numerous times we hear from cousins or friends asking us why we weren’t at so-and-so’s event and every time we tell them no one invited us. And usually the people asking have other events to which we receive no invitation.
This is pretty much just a rant to get this off my chest, so I don’t really have a moral or a conclusion or anything. I just hate the fact that I make an effort to include many of the people I know and love in the things I am doing and yet there rarely is there any reciprocity.
I hope those of you reading this are better than that. If you aren’t, you should take a good look in the mirror and ask yourself what the people in your life rally think of you. I think you can figure out what I would think of you.
Diarist reserves all rights to his original writing only. Community material is not covered by this ©
Now onto the Tops!
TOP COMMENTS
August 4, 2015
Thanks to tonight's Top Comments contributors! Let us hear from YOU
when you find that proficient comment.
From belinda ridgewood:
In Jen Sorenson's cartoon diary about Planned Parenthood and "tissue-gate", DocDawg writes a fascinating diary-quality comment about the science involved.
From David Nir:
Paul Hackett shows up to comment in a diary about Paul Hackett.
From d3clark:
DocDawg's comment based on the visual used to depict the 1 male and 1 female the website uses on its board. (see diary for the visual)
|
TOP PHOTOS
August 4, 2015
Enjoy jotter's wonderful PictureQuilt™ below. Just click on the picture and it will magically take you to the comment that features that photo. Have fun, Kossacks!
|