Piklet Pariah, math classes and another family meal.

Wow! I can't believe how wonderful everyone is on here. I picked a name from the suggestions and Piklet Pariah was a fave of mine. Not going to lie, I totally spent a few mins sniggering at that when I first read it. But ultimately I choose it because my girls have never forgiven her for even suggesting they go a Sunday without piklets. Even almost 4 years later, they still hold this grudge.

I had a few choices for first post and that one seemed to be one of the best because it was sort of the beginning of me realising that this woman was batshit crazy. There was just enough crazy going on here that I thought I was going crazy, in fact it took me over 18 months to realise I wasn't the crazy one in this story.

So for today's story, I thought I'd talk about the first time I met Piklet Pariah. Yeah, this is very BEC but when I eventually pull up the courage to talk about the last couple of years, it will provide good background.

DH and I met when I was 14 and he was 16. It was his first year at my school and I was in an advanced math class whereas he'd been put into a lower level, so what do yah know we end up sitting in the same group together. DH had been taken under the wing of a good friend of mine in his year and so was siting there when I walked in. He jokes now that it was love at first sight, but the reality of it was more like hate at first sight. DH was an asshole! Now I'm fairly sure a lot of it had to do with his total hatred and inability to understand math, coupled with 2 girls at his table that were considerably younger, considerably smarter and fairly cute (if I do say so myself).

It took about a month for DH to calm down somewhat, and we ended up being the only ones in our group present one day and HAD to work together.

Turns out DH understood math just fine... If you explained it too him.

Don't get me wrong, our teacher was great, but that level of not understanding and teaching comes from years of bad teaching, not just a month. Something I know too well as the mother of DH's children, they got his logic and brain.

Eventually after a couple of days I asked what the hell was going on. DH said that normally his mum helps him with math, and she's never been able to explain it this well before, but he'd moved in with his aunt and uncle this year because my school had a better sport department than his old one and he had dreams of becoming [insert sport here] player and had a better shot in my city at my school, so he was having trouble finding someone to explain the math in a way he could understand.

At the time I didn't really think anything of it. He wasn't the first to have a story like this and wasn't the last I came across at that school either.

Cut to the end of the year, DH and I had become really close. I wasn't ready to date him, because I was still 14, but it was all but happening. DH tells me his mother is coming to town and he's been told to invite some friends from school to his aunt and uncles house for dinner. They did this pretty regularly, so I knew them fairly well and said yes. The guest list consisted of me, my BFF DH's BFF, DH BFF's Girlfriend and Girlfriends twin brother. This is a group of people who still some 15 years later still get together regularly, and DH's BFF and Girlfriend broke up probably only about a month after this dinner (completely unrelated) so we were close at the time.

I arrived first. Mostly because I only lived 2 blocks away, but also because DH and I were in that sweet spot of wanting to spend all our time together even though we weren't dating, and we'd been apart more than an hour so of course... Withdrawals. Sigh, young love!

Piklet Pariah answers the door.

My very first words to her were 'you must be DH's mum, hi, I'm [JustInCase].'

I swear to this day she just blinked at me.

Really it wasn't much of a stretch, I was at this house regularly and knew everyone who lived there. Plus DH and his mother look enough alike that it was a reasonable jump.

DH came up behind her before she could even respond. Invited me in, I went to talk to DH's aunt and cousin (and of course hand in the desert I'd brought with me, which was probably either a cake of chocolate chip cookies given what I regularly made at the time) in the kitchen.

A few minutes later I heard DH and piklet pariah arguing.

The sentences 'how old is she?' and 'you aren't dating her... Are you?' were the ones I heard, before DH's uncle came out and shut that shit down.

I should probably state that I look really young. Always have. Most people assume I'm about 5 years younger than I actually am. Now, at over 30 I think it's fabulous, at 14 I wasn't too thrilled with it. DH's aunt and cousin could see the tears in my eyes at the age comment, and because it was DH's mother whom I'd never met and wanted to make a good impression on I didn't just go rip her a new one, a courtesy that not many people get.

Aunt and cousin collralled DH and I outside to wait for our friends who eventually arrived and when we came back in everyone was seated at the table, uncle and aunt either side of piklet pariah.

We made small talk for most of dinner, and it wasn't until 5 years later when we were reminiscing on that dinner that DH ever told me what went on behind the scenes.

Turns out the reason piklet pariah was wincing every so often was because uncle was stepping on her foot HARD so she didn't say anything to piss me off. There was one time that both aunt and uncle had to step on both her feet, kinda wish I'd known about that.

Piklet pariah had made comments about me bringing something and even being invited to this dinner because I was so much younger than DH. DH's cousin had poked the bear a little by singing about sitting in a tree and wedding bells, and piklet pariah had just about had to be tied down to not confront us.

As far as I was concerned we had a fairly nice dinner (aunt is not the best cook, but she means well and cousin and I used to always make sure it came out reasonably ediable or tell her to order take out) and I went home. What happened afterwards wasn't actually simple.

DH got grilled for hours, because he was 'dating a 12 year old' and then piklet pariah was even more pissed because I'd managed to get DH a whole year ahead in math. She looked over some of his tests and was telling him the right answers were wrong. Aunt and uncle brought a clue that night and figured out what DH's underlying issue with math was, and I was paid to tutor him the next year (which was fab for me, paid to spend time with my boyfriend).

DH eventually gave up his sports dreams but still graduated from my high school, I think because aunt and uncle weren't letting him go back to piklet pariah at that point. He eventually got an engineering degree.

Bad at math, my ass! That being said I ended up tutoring him through most of that math, most of which was before I even finished high school.

Piklet pariah still won't acknowledge him having a degree, let alone an engineering one.