(Warning: rant-like post ahead.)

Carrying along the ‘I-am-bitter’ theme, I’d like to discuss a vaguely related topic. I’ve mentioned already that my mother is a (Type #1) smoker. I believe I also made perfectly clear the fact that I don’t approve. At all.

Nor does the rest of our family, which is completely understandable. Especially her brother, my uncle. We knew that. He had been nagging her for what seemed like forever, even going so far as to enlist the help of his six-year-old daughter.

That was unbelievably irritating, but understandable.

Then one day (once upon a time)…Mum came to speak to me. She said, “Kaitlin, I was speaking to Uncle Greg, and he said that you told Trina [my aunt...she'd been giving me a lift to choir] that people at school wouldn’t play with you because they said you smelled like smoke.” I laughed and cursed him under my breath. In case you haven’t figured it out, it was a complete lie. I’d never said anything of the kind. (For the record, that year people at school DIDN’T hang around me much, but that was because I didn’t let most of them. Due mostly to a fault of the school’s, I hadn’t been around them for three years and didn’t really want to be. Groups were already formed, and year 6 girls are no fun at ALL to hang out with. One group I overheard talking about how they were going to become vegetarian and how they couldn’t eat chicken salt because it was made from baby chickens…no joke. But I hadn’t told Trina that, and it didn’t bother me anyway.)

My like for my uncle had been slowly, slowly dying away, but I think that was the one thing that pushed it over the edge. I never told him I knew; I was, however, ranting about it to my Nan, who promptly informed me that he’d told her the same thing.

I don’t care how well-meaning it was. If Mum didn’t have the brains (and the decency) to come and speak to me first, I could have ended up at counselling or god knows what. [I. Strongly Dislike. Seeing. Counsellors.]

End of rant! (Have a nice day!) :-)