Due to past issues regarding inheritance, my mother and my aunt have not spoken to each other in about fifteen to twenty years since their parents died of old age. My mother lives with me, and my aunt has moved to New Jersey to be near her sons.
The town has a small festival every year with food and vendor stalls at the same time that they have school class reunions. My mother and I were at the festival, and we went into the local American Legion, where we are members. The Legion was hosting a couple of different class reunions, and although my mother’s class was not one of them, they were only off by a few years, and she wanted to see who else was there she may not have seen for a while. However, one of the classes was my aunt’s.
We walked around, and my mother spotted some people she knew and talked for a bit. As we were leaving, we heard a woman shouting at the bar:
Woman: “No one wants them here! You need to get rid of her and her gay son!”
And then she gave us a nasty look as she walked back to the reception hall. We wanted to know why this seemingly random woman, whom we did not recognize, was complaining about us and demanding that we be removed.
Woman: *Yelling.* “You’re unwelcome and you need to leave!”
Mother: “What’s your problem?”
I took a look at this woman’s name tag. If you haven’t figured it out yet, this woman was my aunt.
Me: “Mom, that’s [Aunt].”
Then she looked at the name tag and confirmed it. We were both shocked as my aunt looked to be about twenty years older than her actual age.
She continued to rant.
Woman: “You need to leave! No one wants you and your gay son.”
Me: “Just as I have been telling you since I was ten, I’m not gay and never have been.”
Woman: “Where’s your girlfriend?!”
Me: “Just because I don’t have a girlfriend doesn’t mean I’m gay.”
Hours later, I realized the perfect comeback was something like “I don’t have a boyfriend either, so I must be straight by your logic.”
My aunt continued to make a scene, even trying to get the DJ to throw us out. She threatened to call the police and walked off. Even though we were originally leaving, now we wanted to stay more than ever.
After a couple of minutes, three police officers arrived. The officers were all people we knew and interacted with on a non-police basis. I greeted them as they came in.
Me: “Hello, officers. You’re probably here for us. Don’t worry, we were leaving anyway, so there will be no trouble.”
The older officer went to talk to my aunt, and the two younger ones stayed with me and my mother. We explained to them that she originally started the issue and what had transpired.
The older officer returned and stated we had to leave because it was a private function, and we were not invited guests. We told him we would and walked out with them.
As we were driving home, it occurred to me that, besides the pre-existing bad blood, what had set her off was that we probably walked by her and did not recognize her, but from her perspective, we had deliberately ignored her.
We later learned that even after we left with the police, she was still complaining about us, and the Legion commander had told her that if she did not calm down, he would have her whole class thrown out of the reception hall.
