Be Afraid

Almost everyone has a horror story around bringing a significant other home for the holidays. And while we can all agree that every family is their own brand of crazy, I think it’s safe to say that my dad’s side of the family may be a little worst than the norm.

I grew up enjoying tales of the hijinks my aunts and uncles put any potential newcomers through. Some were amusing but harmless – like when they declared it was “weird hat day” or when they went through the house and turned all the photos upside down in their frames. They played a few pranks on girl/boyfriends that were foolish enough to meet the family, but by far the worst shenanigans were whenever someone was engaged. My uncle Dave is still a little bitter about the family vote on whether or not he was allowed to marry my aunt Deb. Of course, it wasn’t a vote in the normal sense. That would be far too easy.

What actually happened was that for Easter dinner, one of my other aunts put eggs full of m&ms at each plate. After the dinner was over, they announced that it was the official vote on whether Dave was accepted into the family, and anyone that ate their m&ms was voting against Dave. Both Deb and Dave are chocolate lovers, so they were dismayed to discover they had inadvertently voted against Dave by eating their candy. In the end the vote to accept Dave passed, but it was a very near thing.

There hasn’t been too much crazy in my generation yet. We like to pick on any significant others with small things, like encouraging them to drink a lot or targeting them when we play games. One Christmas when my brother brought his girlfriend of the time, somebody wrapped a fake diamond ring and stuck it in with the gifts, but thankfully somebody else overruled them and took it out of the pile before madness could ensue.

Of course, until this year no one has been engaged out of my group of cousins. This year though, my cousin Kristen was the first Cameron of our generation to bring a fiancée back for Christmas.

There was a lot of texting, and emailing, and eventually it was decided my father was in charge of coming up with the plan to torture Kristen and Matthew, her fiancée. While we were on vacation in November my dad and I plotted all sorts of potential scenarios about what we could do. My mother didn’t contribute much, possibly because she’s too much of a goody two shoe, or maybe because she didn’t have to go through too much to get into the family.

Once we had a really good idea I floated it past my brother, some of his friends, and some of my friends to see general reactions. When my brother thought it was brilliant and friends thought it was insane, I decided we had an official plan. Given that I was (and still am for next year, seriously why doesn’t anyone else want this job) the Game Commissioner for the day (if you’re unfamiliar with how my family does Christmas, click here to catch up on the awesome), I ended up facilitating things.

My cousin Kristen is a lawyer, so what we decided to do was hold a trial to determine whether or not Matthew was accepted into the Cameron clan.

Impartial Judge Jason

I pretended we were running another game at the end of the night, and then directed Kristen and Matthew to their chairs of honor, Matthew as the defendant and Kristen as his lawyer. I left an empty chair across from them, and then wheeled out my brother’s friend Jason who was acting as our honorable judge for the evening, announcing that as he is not actually part of the family he would be the most impartial and could make a verdict.

Then, I revealed that I had tried to gather character witnesses on Matthew’s behalf, but that none were willing to speak, so instead we had secretly put Matthew through a series of tests over the weekend. One by one I called up other family members to the empty chair to announce the results of these tests.

Shooting Expert Witness Dad

First up was my father, who had taken the adorable couple shooting the day before. He sadly discussed how Kristen clearly outshot Matthew, and that he found this to be very shameful and a point against him.

Drinking Expert Witness Aunt Deb

Next was my aunt Deb, who performed wonderfully considering I had roped her in last minute when one of my brother’s other friends decided against speaking (you may wonder why there are so many random people at our family Christmas. Just more proof of the awesome. If you would ever like to come or want a full detailed description of our games this year let me know!). Deb pointed out that Matthew was drinking red wine, something no one else really does, and how he was barely halfway through the bottle. Moderate drinkers do not keep up with Camerons. Clearly another strike against him.

Walleyball Expert Witness CJ

Finally I called up my brother CJ with the results of the walleyball competition from earlier that day. CJ described how he was really pulling for Matthew to do well, but he was a failure on the court and of course our cousin Kristen really deserves better.

Every so often Kristen tried to make a point or respond to some of the statements, but Judge Jason cut her off. She started to question his (and our) impartialness, but finally I announced that Kristen could now make her case as to why we would allow Matthew to join our illustrious family.

Kristen of course did a stellar job, so good in fact that when we asked Judge Jason for his decision, he agreed with both sides and could not make a final judgment. Instead, he proclaimed that the final game of the evening would determine Matthew’s fate. The planned final game? A poker match, with the victory going to whichever team had the winning player. Matthew was on my team, the reindeers. Unfortunately for him, and as I clarified to the family, the elf team had Jason on it, and Jason is an actual poker champ (like he’s made money doing it).

Kristen & Defendant Matthew questioning the proceedings

For those of you concerned about Matthew’s fate, don’t worry. As Game Commissioner I overruled to remove the poker tournament and allow Matthew into the family. After all he had done a pretty good job all day on the reindeer team, was pretty much solely responsible for winning the corn hole competition, and he took the trial in stride.

Some of my family had questioned why we were carrying on the tradition of torturing potential new members, but I believe in the system. I don’t even care that I could one day go through some similar nonsense. Because the thing is, my family is special. If you stick around long enough you are guaranteed to experience some craziness. I think it’s better to make sure you have someone that can accept that straight off the bat, rather than it being a big surprise later on. Also, my uncle Dave was pretty adamant Matthew should have to go through something. Like I said, he may still be a little bitter. This probably means Kristen and Matthew will take a special interest in whoever is engaged next. So take this as fair warning if you ever consider marrying a Cameron. I don’t know what you’ll go through exactly, but it’s pretty safe to say it’s not going to be your average meet the family.

4 Life Truths I Learned at Jazzercise

Thankfully I have been able to jazzercise again the last two weeks. There was a few week period where due to travel and then my knee being incredibly weird I had to stop. As my friend Jenn put it:  “thank goodness you are Jazzercizing again!  What else would you talk about?   You’d have to result to only TVD and Originals and I don’t know that you’re caught up yet.  So how on earth would you function in society?”

I realized when I returned to jazzercise after my brief hiatus how much I need it to be happy. Not only because it’s a huge stress reliever, but because when I go to jazzercise I am reminded of some very important life truths that help me keep things in perspective. Here are the four top life truths I learned in jazzercise.

4. People Are Stupid (but get over it)

There are times at jazzercise where I am incredibly annoyed by some of the other participants. It has nothing to do with knowing the routine, or how well they do it. Jazzercise is a judge free zone.

No, what pisses me off is the evidence that people lack basic reasoning skills when it comes to arranging themselves in a small place. Sometimes it’s a crowded class, and you’re just not going to have a lot of room. That’s fine. But sometimes people go stand in the most ridiculous spots so now some of us are squished together and the other half of the room could fit like five more people.

Last week I was getting particularly angry because there was a woman right behind me that was so close I had to watch my moves to avoid accidentally kicking/punching her in the face at points (although I kind of wanted to). The kicker was that there was enough space between her and the woman behind her that if one of my tall friends was lying on the floor, there would still be room between them (that’s the only way I can really conceptualize distance). So let’s call that over six feet of space. Did it ever occur to this woman to back up?? No, and in fact with some songs she kept inching ever closer.

But at the end of the routine when we do our strength training there’s always more room, and I have time to calm down. Despite how easy it is to get angry at people and hold on to that anger, it’s so much better for you to let it go. Some of these people are actually really nice, and there is absolutely no benefit to being angry.

3. Everyone Has a Thing

When I reached my 150 classes in October, I excitedly texted a good chunk of my friends and family.  My mom responded with “who would have ever thought you would become an exercise fanatic!” My dad makes similar statements all the time when he calls and I’m like “just leaving jazzercise” or “need to head to my jazzercise class now.”

The thing is, I hate exercising. When my parents tried to get me to exercise when I was younger it was like pulling teeth. Actually harder, because I’ve had a lot of teeth pulled and it’s not that bad of a process.

And even now, when I can’t jazzercise for whatever reason, I don’t workout. I think I should but I can’t make myself do it. But I love jazzercise. It’s my thing. I didn’t think I’d ever find a workout I’d love but there you go. Don’t get me wrong, there are days when I’m too lazy or hungover or unmotivated and I skip class, but overall I think I’m doing a fabulous job with it, and it’s all because I love it so.

2. It Matters Who You’re With

Did you know they’ve done studies that found if you hang around with people that are generally unhappy your happiness goes down as well? It’s too early in the morning for me to find one of those studies, but trust me I’ve read that somewhere.

Who you’re with can play a big role in your attitude and behavior. With jazzercise, I’ve found this particularly true when it comes to the instructors. Even when they’re doing the same routine some of the instructors are a little more enthusiastic than others. They do the high intensity moves pretty much the entire time, and they are freaking HIGH intensity. There are others that do the same song but do it a little more casual.

I’ve found that I always get a better workout with the higher intensity instructors. It doesn’t seem to matter that I realize when the instructor is doing a lighter version, I go along with it. The only exception is when there are other people in the class (that I can see) that are still doing very high intensity.

One of the things they say a lot in jazzercise is that we go to class so we can workout together and motivate each other. This is absolutely true. I apparently am only as committed to the workout at the people around me. I probably should use this knowledge to make myself do the high intensity moves no matter what, but I use it more as a life lesson. I am now trying to surround myself with people that genuinely make me happy, and not people that bring me down.

1. You Can’t Please Everyone

Thank god jazzercise emphasizes this to me so much, because I absolutely need to remember it at all times. With jazzercise, I realized the truth of this statement when I started traveling and hitting a large variety of instructors.

You see, I have my favorites. There are some that I’ve had multiple times that I think are really nice people, but I don’t like their style. However, I’ve heard other people in the class say the same individual is their favorite instructor. There are different things I take into consideration – the intensity level, what they say during the routine, whether they emphasize certain moves that people typically get wrong, etc. There was one instructor that drove me insane because during leg routines she just yelled “get lower!” at us again and again no matter how low we went. There was another the other day that kept telling us to breathe through the nose, and that annoyed me (and also seemed weird since then literally five days later another instructor was yelling that we needed to breathe through the mouth).

The point is, as I’ve discussed multiple times with a friend, people like different things. Certain types of instructors resonate with me better. The reason this is so key for me to remember is that I too often fall in the trap of thinking EVERYONE should like me. When I used to train customers at work, I was devastated by every bad review. Let’s not even talk about how I now have a complex about my voice after a few complaints about it.

I realize this every time I jazzercise and I think I should really learn to keep it in mind every single day. If I can’t please everyone, and I can’t, I think it should be more important to do what makes me happy than worry about what other people are going to think.

There are other little things that jazzercise helps me learn, but those are the big ones. At this point I know that when I don’t get to go to jazzercise for a long period, it makes me cranky. We’ll see how that plays out this week since there’s not really a class nearby.