An update on my sister

Yesterday my sister called me while I was at work. Since I was just sitting in my office waiting for a meeting to start I chatted with her for a few minutes. After awhile she said, "Well, I called to test your skills and apparently they aren't very good."

"What skills?" I asked.

"Your speech skills. You couldn't hear that I'd pierced my tongue."

I made a tsk noise. "Karen, there's a lot of static on my end, I get like zero cell reception in here, and - wait, what?"

"I got my tongue pierced."

"Oh my gosh," I said. "When did that happen?"

"A few hours ago," she said. "So what do you think mom and dad will say?"

"I don't know," I said weakly. I couldn't believe she'd gone and shoved a needle through her tongue. After talking with her for awhile I found out that she'd gone to a professional piercer to have it done, which made me happy. I was afraid that she'd just let Jamie do it.

Now when I told this story to Mike and to some of my friends they've said that I can't really criticize her since I have my tongue pierced too. Plus, we both got them pierced at the age of 23, not it's not like I was years older than she is. But we got them pierced for very different reasons - I wanted a reminder of who I was as I was being assimilated into grad school life, and Karen wants to tick off our parents.

I read somewhere that people with borderline personality disorder don't have much of a personality of their own, so they latch onto different personas. When Karen was a teenager, she was the Troubled Black Sheep...full of problems, perpetually screwing up, and part of a family who didn't understand her. After she married Rocco she was the Preppy Wife...planting gardens, wearing modest sweaters, and playing board games. This fit in well with Rocco's preppy blandness. After they separated Karen reverted back to Black Sheep, which matches Jamie's own black sheep personality.

Man.

I have a hunch this will all come to a head on St. Patrick's Day. We're having a family game night at my Aunt Liz's house. Liz is really sociable and loves to have a big group over at her house, so every once in awhile she hosts a game night for my dad's side of the family. My aunts, uncles, cousins, cousins' kids all come over for snacks and family games like cribbage, Apples to Apples, or volleyball. It's generally understood that my unmarried cousins will bring along whoever they're dating and my married cousins will bring their spouses.

I'm bringing Mike.

Karen's bringing Jamie.

She hasn't told anyone on that side of the family that she's living with someone. Hell, she hasn't even told them that she's getting divorced. This is the way she'll let them know, so it'll result in maximum drama and let her feel put-upon.

Another sticking point is that my Aunt Liz and her family are extremely, extremely fundamentalist Christian. They home-school their kids because they feel that public education is too secular, and my uncle preaches at church when the regular preacher is on vacation. They're wonderful people and will welcome just about anyone into their home, but they make no effort to minimize their faith.

Did I mention that Jamie has a pentagram tattoo on his hand? And that he seems like too much of a prick to hide it? I know that pentagrams aren't really satanic, but some people think that they are, and I bet my aunt and uncle won't know the difference between the various non-Christian religions. They'll be really uncomfortable, and I'm not sure what they'll do.

Now I'm not saying Jamie should lie about his religion, or say he's not Wiccan. But flaunting any religion when you know you're just going to shock people is wrong. He's not willing to discuss his religion calmly, or explain his traditions rationally, like I am when people ask me about Catholicism. I occasionally wear cross necklaces or have ashes on my forehead after Ash Wednesday Mass, and I expect people to notice and ask about it. I answer without being confrontational. Jamie doesn't.

Most people wouldn't subject their Wiccan, live-in boyfriends to their super-religious relatives. Karen is not one of those people. I'm not sure what will happen that night.

So that's my update on my sister. Hooray.