DEARLY DEPARTED

No, this is not about dead family members. It is more about the ones that sometimes I wish had passed away. You know the pain in the butt, “only visit when they want something and never return your calls when you need help” type of relatives.

Yeah those and they are ones I’m just happy when they have departed for wherever other than to my place to try and weasel out some free meal, plus God knows what else. Which wouldn’t be so bad if they departed permanently, but I know as soon as they run out of other people to mooch off of they’ll be back.

Regrettably with the Limburger clan that pretty much describes everyone, myself included. And so I have no illusions about when one of them calls it is going to be for any reason other than “Hi, how are you? Can I borrow…”

If I’m really lucky they even ask how I am. Admittedly they never listen to the answer. That would interfere and take too much time away from getting the answer to whatever they need from me.

I suppose you could ask if all us Limburgers are that greedy and shallow why go through the silly pretense of bothering to keep up any relationship. And you might be right if that was the only concerned.

However there is very important reason I don’t. It is for bragging rights on holidays and family reunions.

While I use the rest of my family, as a Mayor I generally manage to not suck up to them as much as they do to me. That is because I’ve got a whole crop of voters to victimize. And that means most of the time I ended up helping the others more than they do me.

Thus is set the stage for family reunions. And I love going up to one of my scum sucking relatives and pretending to ask how they are doing after I helped them in some way and make it seem like I really care.

What I’m really doing of course is trying to embarrass them in a way that isn’t quite as obvious as I might otherwise like. Oh the person always knows what I’m trying to do and they aren’t thrilled, but you see I know they’ll be back for another need to ask me for help on some other date, so they put up with this little game.

As for me, I LOVE it. Heck it just makes the holidays so much more blessed when I get a chance to pull this kind of crap and leave the person only able to complain about me being a manipulative jerk when I’m not there. Gosh isn’t having such a bunch of creeps for a family nothing, but fun?

But despite all of that there are times I still think in terms of the glorious times when they have departed. Now if I could figure a way to make them do it permanently when they bore me and aren’t fun any longer I’d really have a reason to smile!