So, funny story. We finance people went downtown to our main office this afternoon for lunch and on the way back, we started talking about that video game, Guitar Hero (which I really want to play at some point). I went into a story about how my brother Stephen and I as kids would play a football video game on Nintendo (old school!). Steve would always get mad at me because I would usually beat him at the game, even though he was a huge football junkie. I won because the crappy game would let you do plays that in reality, you couldn’t. My favorite was to do a 60-yard field goal and it usually would work. I’d pick plays at random and I usually did beat Stephen who would stress out about which to pick.
Anyway, my boss was in the front seat and looked back to me and said “This is going to sound awful, but I didn’t know you had a brother.”
Oops, I never told my boss about my brother. I thought I had. I know I’ve told someone here. So, of course, I had to do the really uncomfortable explanation that I had a brother who would have been 29 this year ( a year older than my boss) and he died when he was 18. And then…complete silence. My boss’s eyes went really wide and he said “Sorry to hear that” and then nobody talked. I hate when that happens. I always bring the mood down when I talk about Stephen. I don’t mean to, it just happens. I’ve stopped telling everyone I meet about him for this reason. It’s kinda annoying. I understand why people get uncomfortable, but it is still a little irritating.
And I bet you I don’t get any comments on this post also. I do get it. What do you say? I usually don’t know what to say to other people who’ve had close relatives die. So I guess I should stop complaining. 🙂
I guess that wasn’t a funny story.
Three Months\' Time 