Family

I’m growing increasingly concerned about the imminent cessation of my military career. For starters it seems like I’m going to have to converse with a lot more civilians. Supermarkets make me nervous, and I’m beginning to suspect that Real Life may be very much like walking around Tescos on a hungover Sunday morning: loud, painfully disorganised and full of people suffering from spatial ignorance and the wholesale abandonment of manners and hygiene that results from drinking too much Sunny Delight in front of Emmerdale.
I’ve got myself a nice new civvie girlfriend to break me in gently, plus she can introduce me to life outside the army. She’s so far taught me to use “please” when asking for something, not to point out deficiencies (however glaring) in any services offered me. If I MUST do so, I’m not to point them out using my entire hand or by using phrases such as “shower of sh1te” and “moon-faced cnut.” When giving directions, I no longer get agitated by questions such as “Is that my left or your left?” and “How far is ¾ of a mile, in minutes?” but I am, however, worried about my interaction with the family.
My parents are fine, dad did 22 plus a few and mum has the haunted, yet resigned countenance of a woman who has rarely known either the location, or the medical condition, of those closest to her. So it is I can go months without phoning home, let alone visiting, while incurring little more than a veiled, “we were wondering about you the other day.” My wider family is a little different. The families of my uncles, aunts and cousins etc are much closer knit - i.e. although they also don’t talk to each other for months, it’s because they’ve argued with each other’s step mums, not because they’ve been in places like Copenhagen and Zagreb dressed as Braveheart.

I’m beginning to feel that some of my cousins etc think I’m a bit of a cnut. And not a nice bit either. As seems to be the norm, every other member of my peer/age group seems to have married, wisely or otherwise. If it weren’t for the fact that I like scratching my gonads in polite company, and the nearest thing to a ‘grooming product’ in my bathroom is an orange-flavoured lynx shower gel (with little microscopic particles in) that I use for friction-wanks, people would no doubt be introducing me to their single mate Geremy and loudly proclaiming at dinner parties that they really like “Priscilla Queen of The Desert” to make me feel included. Not only do I encounter this Heterophobia at every turn, but amongst some of my family I am always aware of the echoes of a dozen behind-closed-doors conversations about how negligent I am at the family thing, and how I only ever come back for funerals and…well, funerals. I don’t know what my parents have been telling them either, but they seem to think that I get paid enough to roll around in a hot-tub full of cash while I give orders to thousands of blokes, and that doesn’t help. I would try to explain what it means to be a “Middle Third” Captain, but I’d only depress myself further by thinking of some of the ones who make it to “Top Third.”

They also throw their children at me. Sometimes literally. It’s as if they think that bombarding me with E102’ed-up kids with snot in their hair and chaos in their blood will somehow abrasively wash off my need to get drunk and laid until I die in a nasty ‘Champagne Twister’ accident.

It’s not working so far

Kids are mildly amusing at least, I wish all human relationships started by one wrestling the other to the ground, lifting up their T-Shirt and blowing raspberries on their belly button. We’d be less inclined to start wars.

So, my question to Arrse is this: should I be trying harder with the family and what should I be doing to make them love me?

 

When you get the answer can you Pm it to me. I'm 40 and I still don't get it with the rest of the world.

 

It's too late there's nothing that can reverse years of being elsewhere when important family gatherings went on. Most of my family are forces and with them it's easy to get on with asthey understand the not calling or seeing each other for months if not years at a time but the other side can be complete eejits and seem to think that if you don't pop round every week then you should be disowned!!

 

Stop the lifting tee shirt thing......or you might end up with some prison luvvin, in the shower with Bubba. Nobody likes him either, so you'll be in good company.

Ask Gunny Highway. He'll point out all the pit falls of relationships with humans....particularly those over 12 ys old. He's not known as The Irish Michael Jackson for nothing.

 

Ah the age old problem of how to relate to those who have never been in.

I have only two words of advice. Fcuk 'em. Not literally of course. Your auntie/niece are off limits.

I was lucky in that my side of the family have all served/been family of and understand.

The wifes side of the family are all boxheads and don't understand me at all never mind the fact that I was a soldier they just don't understand.
They treat me as some sort of mad looney that has to be tolerated and treated with kindness in case I flip out and start killing people (trained NATO steely eyed bringer of death see?) So family get togethers are great, they feed me and ensure I am supplied with copious amounts of alcohol and I haven't killed anyone yet so it must be working.

As for working with civies. Well only the discovery of arrse has kept me sane .

 

Have you spoke to your wife yet about those allegations?

 

She said that as far as she was concerned they were true. You did touch that kid. She said if you want to sue, crack on, but doubts that you will as you know what you did.

Lets see you ruin another thread then Pikey.

 

RTFQ, the beauty of your situation is you can have a family as functional or dysfunctional as you like and wish to create!

None of the others will come round for a second visit after mini-RTFQ has peed on their foot, or sniffed their arrse in a friendly how are you and I’m marking my territory manner. You can also teach little Ermintrude to lift up the skirts of anyone you mark with a pat to check out their undies and show you the wears as it were.....

Your home will be your kingdom and you shall lay down the laws, kind of like the Bible according to RTFQ, then you can unleash the little buggers onto society, school will be a breeze when you turn up at parents evening and loudly proclaim while indicating with your whole hand that 'I’ve given you a perfectly good child to work with here don't go and fuff it up with a load of civvy balls!' to their year one teacher....

Mrs RTFQ can be the woman you mould as well; see Cuts on the joys of house training a fully-grown female. He can also recommend a good cattle prod supplier.

In all the family you now have is beyond your help or control, ask Bernie to open up the pit is my honest opinion, it makes sense and the environment would be better off in the long run.

Regards Beebs

 

You're right to be concerned RTFQ, outside the sheltered haven of service life, the world is a strangely surreal and unsatisfying place.

As incredible as it may seem, fully 95% of the human race seem incapable of carrying out simple tasks like unwrapping a sandwich, buying a carpark ticket or walking along the street without obstructing/bumping into other pedestrians.

Whatever you do, dont be tempted to go soft and accept their disabilities, expressions such as:-

"HEADS-UP CHUNKY!"

and

"SHIFT YOUR AR$E YOU FECKIN RETARD!"

will be very useful in your everyday life.

Personally, I seem to be living on the set of a perpetual TV drama/sitcom combining the plot synopsis of "The Prisoner", "Farty Owls" (Fawlty Towers) and "You've been framed"

As for families, mine are like characters straight out of a Tom Sharpe novel. All atempts to placate them have long since been abandoned , and I've just resigned myself to being "the black sheep" of the family


(Not that I'm bitter and twisted!)


Still, it could be worse, you could be French

 

Pot, kettle lardarse! See your first comment on this thread. I was on about the allegations your wife had an affair behind your back when you served at 1BR Corps, Ripon. Chugged on RCT c0ck whilst you were on course. And again, and again. Oh, and again

 

Thank Fcuk for that. Been out for 10 months now and I thought it was just me getting older and less tolerant. What it actually appears to be is that I am mixing more with stupid zombies who couldn't find their own arrse without instructions

 

ah ripon down slys on a fri/sat night after doing the doors at the uni, grabbing a married hun to take back for some severe ragdolling then getting in a scrap and thrown through PRIMA PIZZARIAS window those were the days.

 

You cannot placate the extended family. Don't even bother.

For now, just say what I said when well-meaning relatives wanted to know why, at my advanced age, I wasn't squeezing out 2.5 kids and married to a dentist:

"Gee, your life sounds great. Perhaps after I'm done dating the Santa Monica Rugby Club and spending my extra income on shiatsu massages then I'll join you in the bowels of hell."

You can obviously change the sports club to your female pop group of choice. It won't make you more popular but it will have the desired up-shutting effect.

 

You know Biscuit_ABs wife then!

 

RTFQ: Only one solution to the family wanting you to marry and ' settle down ' - marry a forces bird.. Worked for me.. doesn't matter that she ' outranks' me, now.. all women outrank men one way or another [ 'denial of sex' card played at opportune moments does it every time ].. .

then when kids came along career options were outlined from time in diapers.. they all went into the service as soon as eligible...was nice about it, though, gave them the option of choosing what branch and line serial they ' wanted '...

makes it very simple when shopping at the Canex.. everyone wears khaki/camo...

Interface with civvie street is thus reduced to managable moments...

found that even after I ' retired ' I still have more friends/acquaintences/associates who serve/have served than those who never knew the benefits of sleeping ' al fresco '...

think. in my case, it was genetic.. wife's dad: RN, grandfather Artillery in Afghanistan way back, Greats and great-Greats all served in Army or Navy .. my mother's dad gassed in WWII in the trenches, Uncle an air gunner on bombers -shot down over Germany then POW...

Yeah.. if military in the blood, even by osmosis.. you can walk through civvie street without apologizing for anything and ignore the rest...you'll get used to the moms hustling the kids to the other side of the street when you walk past and there will always be a seat at the bar in any ' reputable ' drinking establishment for the ' auld sodger ' [ at the back next to the plumbing, nicely well away from the high voiced ' business types ' ranting on about their stock portfolios as if that mattered one bit ...]