This is going to be a very personal posting. I did something very embarrassing and stupid which I’m truly ashamed of. A few months ago my wife bought concert tickets to a Miley Cyrus show for last Sunday. Well, I’m born in ’72 and a die-hard Blues and Rock-Fan, so my interest in Miley’s work is rather limited, however, my wife wanted to give our two girls something exciting they would look forward to. Our younger one, Britney, didn’t really care about the concert. But Jenny got more and more excited about the event as the date came closer. On Sunday morning, the day of the concert, my wife Ann received an email reminder from the concert promoter. In order to ensure the validity of the tickets to the concert, the ticket holders will have to show the credit card which they used for the purchase, upon entrance to the venue. Otherwise, the tickets will not be honored – no exceptions.Unfortunately, the credit card we used for the tickets had been discontinued due to a fraudulent transaction we had noticed, and we got issued a new one. Ergo, we were not in possession of the original card anymore. Ann must have spent two hours on the phone with the ticket vendor and the banks. There was no way to work something out for us and eventually the vendor told us that we will get a refund. This was an acceptable solution to us, however, also an equally huge disappointment to our daughter Jenny.
And surely enough, Jenny started to argue with us. Big time. The whole thing escalated after a few minutes and my wife yelled at her and she yelled at my wife. For those of you who have kids, I’m sure all that doesn’t sound too much of an unusual event. But Jenny quite often doesn’t understand when enough is enough, and that giving into to something from time to time, might be the wiser choice as opposed to trying to ALWAYS have the last word. She can be brutally argumentative.I have a huge problem with disharmony, it makes me physically sick. I can observe or participate in an emotionally loaded argument; however, at the end I need some sort of consensus. Just walking away from a situation like that is simply impossible for me. Plus I have a huge aversion to yelling, I never yell myself and I can’t stand it being in a room where people shout at each other. So of course I had to be “Mr. Problem-Solver and Harmonizer” again. And there is nothing wrong with that, I like myself in that role, however, the way I conducted myself in that particular situation, still causes me stomach aches when I think about it. As Jenny and Ann finally lowered their voices to a somewhat normal register again, I told both of them that the situation they had created was detrimental to our health. And we need to avoid getting riled up like that – BECAUSE WE HAVE CANCER. I don’t remember the exact words anymore, but it was along those lines. I have been using our cancer as a threat to both, my wife and my daughter. And even worse, when I started to think about it, I noticed that I had done that before already during a few other incidents. And I would have probably continued to do that, if Ann hadn’t told me as soon as a finished my sentence, that I should not use our condition as a threat to others. There was two seconds of initial denial in my head, but then I had to immediately admit that she was absolutely right. I apologized right on the spot to both of them, but the damage was done.

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