When Families Collide

[Griff]

We've been spending a lot of time with another family because our kids participate in the same sport. Unfortunately, we are not terribly compatible. Pete and I have an atypical relationship. Because of the way we're wired, we don't have the usual gender based distribution of responsibility.

I like to think we are a marriage partnership in the truest sense. We try to choose the rational over the traditional when it makes sense. This has lead us to develop respect for one another as one of our highest values. This is how our love for one another is expressed. We are both pretty quiet and laid back, which is where our difficulty lies.

Our friends have a male dominated household. The Mrs. is meek and it is generally understood that males are smarter, stronger, and better athletes than females. The Mr. talks at 90mph and if truth be told offends my libertarian sensibility every 8 seconds. When I do choose to argue a point he heres but does not listen just moving on to the next tale, which we've already heard innumerable times.

None of this matters, except when his son attempts to treat my daughter as he treats his wife. I'm not trying to raise Hillary Clinton here, so my kid usually just glares at him when he gets stupid instead of chewing him out. We had a fencing tournement yesterday in which my daughter, the youngest competitor, finished the day 4 and 4 but did poorly in the direct elimination part of the tourney, losing to his older more experienced son. She hasn't been fencing well against him lately and I'm thinking he's in her head a little bit. She was unable to shrug off a seating anomoly, getting upset that the seating was determined by the second round robin pool where she was 1 and 2 rather than the combined results with the first pool which she won at 2 and 1 and low point differential. (there are countless ways to run a tourney)

She now understands how the system worked and how in the future she should save her energy in the first pool and fence harder in the second. The problem was the father and son thought is was important to explain long and loud to her about the way this type of tournement worked even though they didn't understand it themselves. Pete and I intervened too late and lil' Pete was emotionally unhinged prior to the direct elimination, just beating an inferior fencer and then losing badly to the son.

She got played. There were tears. She's learned the hard lesson that she should walk away from gamesmanship. Of course, we still have to hang out with these folks twice a week so writing this was my way of figuring out what went down and blowing off steam. I think we've figured it out...