Normal teenager

Janeway has suggested -- I believe with respect to my last post -- that I tell Wife that the boys are just behaving like normal teenagers when they want nothing to do with us.  Hell, I remember being a teenager, and "spending a whole lot of time talking to my parents" sure wasn't one of my top priorities.

But I have had limited success pitching this concept to Wife.  Or rather, let me call it inconsistent success.  Some days she is perfectly willing to accept the explanation.  Other days she insists that when she was a teenager, by God she wanted to talk with her mother every single day and she even kept in touch with her father out of duty: so what's wrong with our kids, anyway?  [Her parents were never strictly speaking divorced, but they lived apart almost all the time Wife was growing up.]

When she was ranting about Christmas presents (and segued into ranting about how Son 1 doesn't keep in touch with her) I did try suggesting that Son 1 was, in this, behaving no differently than she would have behaved at her age.  Surely she didn't really want to spend a lot of time with her folks?  Couldn't she put herself in his shoes and translate that sentiment to him?

She answered, "Well I had a reason, because at every holiday or school event or family get-together my father was always drunk off his ass, dribbling spit and embarrassing everyone. And I don't do any of that, so it's not the same."

It was on the tip of my tongue to explain to her, "Yes it is the same. No, you don't get drunk and you don't dribble spit. But at every holiday or school event or family get-together you do indeed embarrass everyone ... by insisting on joining every conversation and then misunderstanding what it is about so that your 'expert comments' have nothing to do with the point, by nattering on so long that nobody else can get a word in edgeways even when you have nothing to say, and by complaining bitterly about everything. It is just as embarrassing as anything your father could ever have done, and it is no surprise to me that the boys want to keep you insulated away from their lives and their friends."

But I didn't say it.  I have learned that the things I really want to say because they give me a warm, self-righteous glow while saying them are always things I regret later.  Some day, maybe after the paperwork goes through, I think it might be useful for her to be told these things.  But maybe not right now.