F.F.F.

Forced Family Fun, or as the Golemo children call them, "Triple-F" nights.

I just got back from the yearly Golemo Family Mandatory Retreat. Every year, for at least two days, our family does something over the winter break. You don't have to be alive, but you have to show up. Usually Mommacho rents out a cabin somewhere and we bring food, chips, hot cocoa and enough board games to annoy even the Parker-Bradley brothers. True to form, we always complain before-hand but have a great time when we actually show up.

Make the best of a bad situation. With parents like mine, its a mantra.

Before we all started moving off to college, my parents would occasionally spring a FFF on us during the week like nail in a floorboard snagging our brand new socks. It doesn't matter what "plans" we had, "family comes first." And when I say it doesn't matter what we had planned, I mean it. Unless it was a graded school event, prom, or similar matter, my father didn't care. FFF came first.

If he was in a charitable mood, and the look on our face was particularly surrendering, we were allowed to call our friends and cancel our trips to the pool, study dates and dentist appointments. And we were even given permission, when my mom wasn't around, to use the excuse, "my father is a sanctimonious asshole, that's why I can't come."

It used to annoy me, but now I'm glad my father and mother were such ruthless jerks about it all. They helped me to understand that, for the most part, outside friendships are fleeting. Johnny down the street might be fun to hang out with now, but there is no way he could be more important to me than family. And young Suzy may be waiting at Dairy Queen now for me to come flirt with her, but there's no way she's more important than family. When the whole world's coming down on my head, my friends will leave, hell, my faith may even leave. But my family will always be my family.

Thank you GOD for giving me sanctimonious assholes for parents.