SelfAbsorbed.ME : ‘It’s Your Life, We Just Write it Funnier’

So get this. I have this friend, let’s call her, Anna. A few weeks ago, Anna was on a relaxing beach vacation with her family: parents, aunts, cousins, the whole gang. Including her brother and her brother’s wife, who we will refer to as Carrie.

To get to the beach, Anna rode down in a car with a friend of hers from New York, while her parents drove from their home in their car and her brother and sister-in-law in yet another car; Anna’s car. Anna was hesitant to allow her brother and sister-in-law to borrow her car because, well, it’s her car and frankly she doesn’t really like her sister-in-law. Why? Because Carrie is a religious zealot/fervent Palin-supporter/die-hard Republican who is unemployed by choice at the age of 25 because God told her to be.

Anyway, the only positive thing Anna could see coming from her brother borrowing her car was that Carrie would have to ride in a vehicle adorned with sticker supporting Obama; a man who she believes to be the anti-Christ. And wouldn’t that just be so sweet.

Everyone got to the beach on Saturday, just as scheduled, and was having a splendid time catching up and eating pizza and doing all the inane crap you do on a family vacation.  On Sunday, however, upon passing her car parked on the street, Anna noticed something very, very disturbing. The sticker was missing from her car’s right rear-window. How could this be? Was it possible that Carrie was really so insane that she would remove a sticker from another person’s car (that she was graciously allowed to borrow) because it didn’t agree with her insane system of beliefs?

Anna didn’t want to jump to conclusions, so she asked her brother where the fuck her sticker was. His reply? “Oh, Dad told me to take it off because the adhesive was going bad.” Yeah fucking right, like Anna was gonna believe that steaming load of horseshit. I, I mean, she, had heard more likely stories being told by Mother Goose and we all know that old broad is nothing but a dirty, cheating liar out to steal childrens’ lunch money. Besides, she had other stickers on her car dating back to 2003 that remained in place, regardless of adhesive integrity.

In short, she didn’t buy it. Anna later asked her father, “Hey Dad, what happened to my Obama sticker?” He responded, “Oh, well, Carrie had said something like she wasn’t comortable riding in a car with that on it, and they asked me if they could take it off so I said yes.” Aha! Mr. and Mrs. Jesus McChristian are not only batshit crazy, but total liars too! I wonder what God would say to all of this.

Anna’s next step was to address this gross injustice. She could either throw a tantrum and chew her brother out for being so petty and pussy-whipped, causing a huge scene, or she could simply replace the sticker, giving her sister-in-law a big fat middle finger “fuck you” while still appearing to be the bigger, more mature person. And of course, who can resist a big fat middle finger? Not I.

So Anna and her cousin, Liz, made it a mission to immediately go out and buy a brand new Obama sticker, which would be no easy task seeing as they were in a small town on the East Coast and the election was over more than six months ago. They searched and searched until finally coming upon a stroke of luck: the very kind gay man who owns the kitschy toy store had three leftover bumper stickers hidden away behind the counter, and he sold them one for $1.50.

At the end of the weeklong family beach vacation, Anna affixed her brand new Obama sticker where the old one had been, anticipating that her brother and his wife would be driving home in her refreshed Obama-mobile. After putting it on, Anna told her brother, “I put a new Obama sticker on my car, and I expect it to stay there!” He said fine, he didn’t care. And why should he? It was brand new adhesive, after all.

To Anna’s dismay, plans changed at the last minute and it turned out that Anna would be riding home in her mother’s car, with her father, brother, and sister-in-law. She would not get to relish the sweet satisfaction of Carrie’s reaction to the new sticker, which she had yet to notice.

Even so, Anna was satisfied that she had won this round. She told the story to all who would listen, about her crazy-ass sister-in-law who took it upon herself to make sure other people’s personal property reflected her political opinions. Because I mean, who else can we turn to for political guidance if not the outrageously religious, under-30, willfully unemployed population? And anyway, this wasn’t about politics. It was about the boundaries of personal property. It could’ve been a goddamned Snoopy sticker for all Anna cared; the point is, you just don’t go around messing with other people’s shit.

So anyway, Anna put it behind her. Until the following Monday when she got into work and checked her Facebook. There was Carrie’s status update, dated Saturday, 4:30pm - right around when Anna’s mother would’ve returned home in her car, beamingly supporting Obama. It said, and I quote, “Petty. Very petty indeed. Some people just need to grow up and practice that “tolerance” thing they preach so much.”

Excuse moi? Was this directed at Anna? Was she being accused of being petty, immature, and intolerant for replacing a sticker that another person had the balls to remove from her car because of petty political differences? Aw hell no. Anna’s head was about to explode, because this statement emanated from a world where logic and reason do not exist.

And wasn’t it petty to indirectly attack someone in your Facebook status? Wasn’t it petty to remove a sticker from someone else’s car and then lie about it? Anna simply replaced what had basically been stolen from her, without a word to anyone about it, and she was not being called out on fucking Facebook for Christ’s sake. How dare she!

Had the world gone mad?!! What planet are we on? Bitch, if you got something to say to Anna you come right out and say it. But of course Carrie couldn’t do that, (because she is by nature petty, hence using Facebook as a mediary) and because Anna would fucking destroy her.

This left Anna in a very sticky situation. On the one hand, she was very tired of letting Carrie be an outrageously crazy and offensive bitch all the time, but on the other hand, fighting back on Facebook would only reduce her to Carrie’s level (petty), validate her insanity, and cause tension within the family. So, in the interest of keeping the peace, Anna decided to be the bigger person, yet again, and left it alone.

But she did tell everyone this long-winded story, including you, fine readers, and got much confirmation that Carrie is, indeed, a succubus from hell whose actions are irrational and who is determined to destroy her family. And that’s all she really wanted. The end.