Beech Tree News Network

Even though she graduated high school over forty years ago, my sister-in-law, Charlotte, will never let my mother-in-law, Aggie, forget that she made her young daughter wear socks to school her senior year, instead of buying nylon hose for her like all the other girls were wearing at the time. 
    “I wore socks my senior year,” Charlotte says, in her best Aggie impression, “If they were good enough for me, they’re good enough for you.”  Charlotte makes a point to remind Aggie of all the things that were good enough for her own mom, but weren’t imposed on the young Agnes. 
    Of course, it will do Charlotte little good to try to make the relativity connection for Aggie.  I learned early in my marriage that most of my husband, Garey’s, family suffers from relativity blindness.  If you try to take them beyond comparing apples to apples, you’re in uncharted territory. 
    When Aggie and Charlotte visited our house over the holidays this year, the first comment Aggie made when she walked into our living room was, “Sabria has so many toys, she doesn’t know which one to play with first.”
    Garey responded with his old standby, “Yeah, it’s Christmas every day of the year around here.”
    These comments offended my daughter, Natalie, Sabria’s mom.  I’ve heard the same comments or variations for going on forty years, so they’re pretty much water off a duck’s back for me.  When our kids, Natalie and Nikki, were small, Aggie and J.D. (Garey’s dad) would add, “And they don’t take care of anything they’ve got.”
    Comments of this sort rarely go wasted on me.  I might not respond immediately, but I log everything into my memory palace to be used at a later date.  The later date for the “don’t take care of anything” comment came after both girls had graduated high school.  I transformed my sunroom into a display room for all of the toys my kids “had not taken care of.”  I put shelves on every wall then grouped their toys by like items.  Baby dolls stretched along one shelf; the Ninja Turtles had two shelves; horses and My Little Pony ponies lived together on a lower shelf; and every stuffed animal ever owned by either girl took up position on the top-most shelves.  The toys were in remarkable condition, considering they “had never been taken care of.” 
    I kept the toys displayed for a number of years—long enough to make my point—and the only thing that would bring me more pleasure than that display would be for Nikki to sell the four original Ninja Turtles, never removed from their packaging, for enough money to make a down payment on a house.  (Nikki had the four originals she played with till the paint wore off.  I had enough foresight to realize the Turtles would someday become collector’s items, and bought four to keep for such time.)
    I used to believe that people who resent others having material things they, themselves, didn’t then or don’t now have were either jealous or lacking in empathy.  I’ve come to realize many of them just have relativity blindness.  They can’t see how what they do or what they own is really the same, even though different, from the people who are receiving the brunt of their criticism. 
    Garey, who often makes his “It’s Christmas every day of the year” comment in reference to Sabria and her toys, loves to take a Harbor Freight flyer and a checkbook to Bowling Green in order to buy things for “the farm.”  Granted, our land provides grazing for our friend’s cattle and our horses, as well as providing a large garden, but much of our farm is basically a wild life preserve on which Garey spends his time hunting.  He doesn’t hunt so we can eat.  He hunts because he likes to hunt; just like Sabria plays with Barbie because she likes to play with Barbie. 
    Aggie bought a new living room suit this year—a leather sofa and love seat—before Christmas.  She called Garey last night to tell him she bought a new kitchen stove—after Christmas.  Although she made the case that her previous living room suit didn’t sit well and her stove was almost worn out, we didn’t have to sit in the floor before Aggie got the new sofa and love seat, and we had plenty to eat before she bought the new stove.
 And you know what?  Sabria was happy for her when she saw the new furniture and heard that she got a new stove.   You know why?  Most kids don’t know relativity blindness.  They know happy.  If you’re happy, they’re happy.  They learn discontent from us.  It’s too bad that many of us are such good teachers.