“This started on Thanksgiving this year.
I am from Scotland and have been living in the US since Christmas day 2013.
In 2011, I met my wife when I was working in London. She is from Houston, Texas, and was sent over to work for the London office of our company. We got married in 2012, and due to the company we work for closing down, we moved back over to Austin, Texas where she was living for 20 years before London.
With her being from Texas, you can imagine that some of her family is extremely conservative, which I frankly don’t care if they are or not. However, doesn’t matter if you are a conservative, liberal, socialist, etc.; if you are mean, then you suck.
We were sitting in the living room watching TV after an amazing Thanksgiving dinner. Someone mentioned the whole new open carry law starting this new year in Texas. Being from Scotland where weapons are not around, they asked me, ‘What do you think of that law? Being from a place with no weapons.’
‘It’s kinda foreign to me. Not sure how I would react seeing a holstered weapon in plain view. Honestly, think I would feel uncomfortable and unsafe, but that is just my upbringing,’ which I thought was fair enough to say.
My wife’s aunt turns to me and comes out with, ‘Well, that’s because you are from a socialist country. You also have a queen that rules your people. You are not citizens. You are a subject. If you were allowed weapons, you would be a citizen.’ She then proceeded to tell me that the Syrian refugees were coming over and it was bad and she needed to protect herself from them.
Fast forward an hour and she was pretty hammered. We were about to head back home. I thanked everyone for the great meal and she turned and said, ‘Too bad you are not going back to your own country.’ I didn’t say anything at all. I did not want to stoop to that level…yet.
Since then she had apologized. Via text. I replied saying, ‘No problem. Don’t worry about it.’
We went to Houston for Christmas. She was there. We exchanged gifts. I handed her an envelope. She opened it and as I expected, she lost her freaking mind. She threw the piece of paper on the ground and stormed out.
My mother-in-law picked up the paper and read, ‘A donation of $250 had been made to Unicef USA for the Syrian Child Refugees by (my name) on behalf of (aunt’s name).’
I just said, ‘I thought, judging by the pro-life sticker on her car, she would appreciate that…my bad.’
I sat down and took a swig of my drink. The rest of the evening was awkward.”
