First, the good news. I believe the idiot has finally learned the difference between her phone number and mine. I haven’t received any phone calls intended for the other Joanna in quite some time now. This pleases me to no end as there is nothing quite as annoying as getting people calling you at all hours of the day demanding your time and money and you know you have never used or even plan to use their services. Nothing quite like get a call in the early morning from some New York Moving Company you know nothing about.

Now, the not-so-good news. You may recall, back in January, that I mentioned how my uncle had seemingly cut me out of his life for no apparent reason and was basically throwing a temper tantrum unbecoming someone his age? You may also recall me posting an update about how he had finally got back in touch me my grandfather as well.

Well, apparently he is now in regular contact with both my grandfather and my mother. Seems, they’re back in his good graces. My mom also confirmed, that yes, he did take offense to one of the messages I had on my voice mail. This of course completely justifies his ignoring my existence for over a year. Not! I’m still not in contact with him, the last time I spoke to him was back in March or April of 2007. It’s September of 2008. It’s been over a year, not to mention, he didn’t acknowledge or attend my graduation. I think I have a reason to be miffed with the man right now.

Apparently he’s asked my mom and grandfather about how I’ve been and attempted to relay his greetings to me through them. The way I see it, he has my phone number, he can tell me himself. If, by some chance he’s lost it, he can easily ask them to pass the phone to me or even ask them for my phone number. He doesn’t. To me that says he’s not sorry at all. On top of this, my mother has been trying to persuade me to just forgive and forget, and that when he talks to me again, to not demand an apology and put it behind us all.

Am I wrong in thinking that’s completely messed up and that I deserve an apology? I’ve had messages, sarcastic and comical, before on my voice mail that he took no offense to. Not to mention, I did talk to him when that voice mail greeting was enabled, if he took offense why not say something then?

Besides, it’s kind of hard to imagine the voice message offending him that badly considering the fact that he himself likes to rile people up and is merciless when he finds something to tease you over. For crying out loud, he’s got this machine set up to his phone so that when he first picks up the phone it plays that classic (and annoying) error message. You know, the one that goes: The number you have dialed has been disconnected or is no longer in service. If you feel that you have reached this recording in error, please hang up and try you call again. During which point crank callers, telemarketers, and collectors would normally hang up and scratch the number off their list. Those who are family and friends know to identify themselves while the message is playing and he’ll turn it off and talk to you.

With that in mind, how could he honestly take offense to a voice message that went something along the lines of “I’m making some changes in my life, and if you don’t hear back from me, you’re one of those changes.” See, I could understand him taking offense if he never heard back from me. However, for the two or so weeks that I had that message up before switching back to my old trilingual¹ message on account of the fact that I was applying to various agencies and wanted to sound more professional, the following happened:

1. The message was up briefly, he left a snide comment about it. I called him back.
2. He called again, this time he reached me. He commented on the message, I mentioned that I thought it sounded funny but was going to change it to a more professional one. He joked about whether I would be switching back to Pirates of the Caribbean like one². I said no, and explained about my career hopes and my upcoming graduation in December of ‘07.
3. Changed the message a couple of days after that conversation, a week tops

During that time he called multiple times, when I was usually in class, I generally called back when I got a chance but was never able to reach him. The man has caller-id, my calls would have shown up on it, so it’s not like he couldn’t see I was trying to get in touch with him.

Given all that happened, how he ignored my [then] upcoming graduation, didn’t acknowledge my attempts to call him, and then started ignoring gramps and mom as well, don’t I have a right to feel rather hurt over all of this still? Am I really wrong to want him to acknowledge that he was acting like a child and it was uncalled for? Or should I just be willing to pretend like nothing ever happened and it’s all water under the bridge? Remember, he’s still not talking to me himself yet. He cut ties back in March/April of ‘07. He got back in contact with gramps several months ago, and not long after, my mother as well. It has been, roughly, a year and a half since he last talked to me, we’re shooting for two years in March of ‘09. Can I just forget that and eagerly await the day I’m back in his good graces or is it time someone held him accountable for his part in all this mess?

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1. The voice message states: Hello. You have reached XXX. I am unable to answer the phone at this moment, but if you leave me your name, telephone number, and a brief message, I will contact you as soon as possible. Thank you, goodbye. in English, Spanish, and Japanese. I used this message because I wanted to emphasize the fact that I know more than just English and that one of the languages isn’t a common one either. [↩]
2. In PotC: Curse of the Black Pearl, when Jack and Will find Gibbs sleeping in the pig pen, Jack wakes him and gives this confusing third-person spiel about how to break the bad luck of waking a sleeping man. My message was a play off of that and went like this: The person whose number was dialed is unavailable. So the person who dialed the number must leave a message for the person whose number was dialed so that the person whose number was dialed can return the phone call of the person who dialed the number at the person whose number was dialed’s earliest convenience. [↩]