In-laws must make an effort

DEAR MISS MANNERS >>

My husband and I have been married for seven years; he is from a rural, white, homogenous community, and my family are immigrants from Southeast Asia.

I’m struggling with an issue with my in-laws: They still, after all these years, claim they cannot remember or pronounce the names of my family members. Every visit is peppered with, “What’s your sister’s name again?” “Help me with your dad’s name?”

This is exhausting. I already allow them to call me by a shortened, Anglicized version of my name for their convenience, and I fear losing my temper the next time they need help with a name in my small immediate family. GENTLE READER >> Send them a primer. Before the next visit, Miss Manners suggests that you type out the names, as well as phonetic pronunciations, of your family members.

That way, the next time they ask, you may good-naturedly tell them, “Now, Karleeygh, you know we went over this. I sent you all of the names before, remember? It would mean so much to us if you pronounced them correctly. They’ve worked so hard on learning to pronounce yours.”

DEAR MISS MANNERS >> Twenty years ago, I introduced two of my dear friends to each other, and they immediately fell in love. Within a year, they were married, all the while expressing their gratitude to me for bringing them together.

During their engagement and the early part of their marriage, we spent much happy time together. Being an amateur videographer, I recorded a lot of this, resulting in a very detailed video record of the period.

Unfortunately, the good times did not last, and my friends went through a bitter divorce 10 years ago. We have all drifted apart.

I have undertaken an ambitious project to convert my large number of old videotapes into updated formats, and consequently made DVD copies for my two old friends. I felt that the videos were part of their life histories and that they were entitled to them.

I also hoped that it might be a good way for me to reconnect with each of them.

What happened? She wrote me a short note thanking me for thinking of her, but stated that she could not watch the DVDS, while he returned his with no message whatever. Each action hurt me.

Was I wrong to have shared these memories and dredged up the past? I had hoped to reignite my friendship with each of my old friends, but now feel that I’ve been solidly identified with a period of their lives that they’d both like to forget.

GENTLE READER >> Yes. The second one. If you had wanted to connect with them and also see if they were interested in the recordings, you could have said, “I have been thinking of you and would love to get together. I found some old videos that I thought you might be interested in, but perhaps you can tell me if you would like copies of them.”