Dodged a Bullet There, I Did

One of the best parts of Thanksgiving weekend is being able to spend time with my best friend Sue. Sue and I got to be friends about ten years ago when I was still engaged to her brother, G. G. is now married and has a child, and I try to be happy for him, but I know that parts of me can't help but wonder what my life would have been if we had stayed together. After today's information, I'm pretty sure I know...

G. and his wife W. are incredibly selfish. That's really nothing new, but Sue filled me in on some stories that demonstrate this:

• For their mother's birthday, Sue and her siblings arranged to have a group photo taken of all the grandkids (a total of ten from four families). This was a fiasco orchestrated primarily by W. to allow her to benefit the most. Everything from where the photo would be taken to what clothes the kids would wear was decided by her.
• Sue and G.'s brother D. helped G. to finish the basement in their house. In fact, D. pretty much did the job by himself with little help from G. But when D. needed help on a little project... G. just couldn't spare the time to help.
• G. bought a farm near his parents as an investment. He borrowed the down payment from his parents, then his parents fixed up the house. G. sold the house for a nice profit, but hasn't paid his parents back for the down payment. He still owns the farmland and wants his brother J. to lease it to farm next year, but G. wants an exhorbitant price for the rent of the land. J.'s wife is against paying to rent the land, so they think that G.'s parents will end up farming it.
• G. borrowed D.'s pickup for some errand. It had a full tank of gas when he picked it up, but an empty one when he returned it. Considering that they only live 15 minutes away from each other, no one is really sure why he used so much gas, let alone why he didn't have the common decency to refill the tank before he returned it.
• Last winter, Sue and her husband, Dave had a few months left on their lease when they bought a new Yukon. So they had both the new Yukon, the old Suburban, and Dave's Buick. They allowed G. and W. to borrow the Buick to use if an occasion arose where they needed two cars (G. and W. have only one car and she is a stay-at-home mom). It turned out that G. drove the Buick to work every day all winter and made no effort to keep it clean. They even drove it out to his parent's house (about a two hour drive) for a family dinner one time. They then had the gall to talk about how much better their Honda is than American cars at this same family dinner. Turned out they were using the Buick whenever possible and saving their own car. When Dave got his car back, it had 10,000 more miles on it (in only about four months) and needed $1,000 in repairs.

In other words, I may still be single, but at least I'm not living with a selfish little user. Or more likely... divorced from a selfish little user.