Let’s do this together

Half-term argument #203. It’s only Day 4, but it’s like being back in the playground with all the name-calling.

I have a real issue with the term “Karen” being used by The Dark Lord and her silly friends.

When I hear them say it, I launch into a diatribe about how they’re just playing into the oppressive patriarchal system.

Getting in a huff, I lecture them: “Stop using language that denigrates women. The word Karen is just another way of saying, ‘Women, know your place’.”

Then The Dark Lord’s friends snigger, and she just glares at me and says: “Are you quite finished, Boomer?”

Which sets me off again, and I get on my soapbox about how Boomers were born before me, and anyway they shouldn’t be ageist.

“I’m Gen X,” I rant. “We’re the fun generation who drank too much and partied all through the 90s and naughties, and lived off a diet of Pop Tarts and wore low-rise cargo pants that barely covered our front bottoms. We were the fun, crazy generation – we put the fun in dysfunctional.”

“Well you’re not much fun now,” grumbles The Dark Lord, and I have to agree she has a point.

“That’s probably because I’ve got a joy thief living with me these days,” I snipe back at her.

I’m also on the receiving end of quite a lot of teensplaining at home.

I often find myself saying to The Dark Lord after her latest lecture: “Really? Well I just don’t know HOW I got through the first 40 years of my life without you around to guide me.”

She actually called me a Tory the other day. I nearly choked on my tea because if she knew anything – just anything – about politics, she would know that I am many things, but I am not a Tory.

“Do you even know what a Tory is?” I enquired before she could escape being questioned closely.

“Yes of course I do – it’s a silly posh girl,” she replied, but I could detect she was feeling on rocky ground.

“Ah ha!” I laughed. “That’s Tory as in a short name for Victoria! Tories are members of the Conservative Party, which – for those of you still using crayons – are the blue ones.”

“I knew that,” she flounced off, no doubt to consult TikTok on the theory of relativity or something.

Email me at siobhan.mcnally@mirror.co.uk or write to Community Corner, PO Box 791, Winchester SO23 3RP.