Evan LightI wrote "Happy First Contact Day" to my in-laws. It was in jest. They're Catholic. They know about as little about Star Trek as someone with the vaguest notion of pop culture can.
You see, I tend to send them humor that they don't understand. At first, that wasn't by design. Now, it's humor that I know they won't understand.
Today, I suddenly realized that, now, it's an unconsciously sardonic, passive aggresive, and even perhaps cruel habit of mine.
I often feel like an alien, among my in-laws; their interests and topics of conversation and day to day lives have been foreign to me for over a decade.
Sometimes, it even feels like they try to evoke that feeling in me. Yet that's almost certainly my own dysfunctional adaptive reading of them; they can be challenging people but are generally kind.
When I send them humor, where their initial reaction is ❓❓❓then, for once, maybe they feel like the aliens. Maybe, in a way, they can feel a little of what it's like to be me. Otherwise, they don't ever seem to understand.
When that all hit me, a few minutes ago, the day just became too real.