With the onset of the Christmas winter season, Westford Academy students face a stress almost as soul-crushing as their workload: the inescapable dread of interacting with extended family members. We spoke to a few members of the student body to get some advice for dealing with this burden.
With the oppressive holiday spirit of the Pheasant Lane Mall and forty-six days of endless Christmas carols, Christmas can be a trying holiday. Observers of the holiday have enough to juggle without the further inconvenience of interactions with extended family members. Upon returning from break, five Westford Academy students will be endowed with the prestigious Excellence in Interaction Avoidance Scholarship. This new award honors excelling students for their laudable efforts towards maintaining privacy and dignity in the face of nosy aunts and uncles alike.
“I can’t believe my aunts and uncles,” said one student. “Why would they ever inquire about my life or well-being? So annoying! Anyways, I normally put on headphones without playing any music. That way, I can selectively ignore any questions that don’t involve Instagram, Facebook, or Starbucks.” This student also compiled a curated list of colleges they were rejected from to expedite uncomfortable comparisons to cousins.
Someone else described his techniques for making himself so uninteresting that no family member would have any reason to make conversation. In fact, his interview was so uninteresting that nothing he said warrants publishing. That’s dedication.
“Me, I like to play conversational chicken with my family,” said another. “You know, like, ‘What colleges am I looking at, Uncle Larry? Here’s a better question: How’s your crippling gambling addiction going? And your floundering start-up? What about your wife? Oh, that’s right, she left you last month. My bad.’ And like magic, I’m left to enjoy Christmas, blissfully uninterrupted. Works every time.”
Another student prefers a more covert approach. “I sort of, uh, emerge from the shadows, get myself a plate of ham and that thing Aunt Deborah made, and then make a beeline back to my room. And lock the door. And boot up DoTA. DoTA never asks about my career plans. It never wonders why I wear Crocs around the house. DoTA understands.”
Yet another prefers “to listen patiently to whatever questions I’m asked. Then, I take a big breath in and scream at the sheer agonizing terror of all of life’s problems. If they try to follow up, I get louder and make increasingly more intense eye contact.” When family members are particularly oblivious, “my final resort is to get really close, like uncomfortably close, to their ear and crank up the scream all the way to eleven. Once their eardrum blows out, I figure I’ve done my job.”
Strikingly, none of the students interviewed made any mention of spreading goodwill or making meaningful connections with relatives during the holidays.
