Oh, large family gathering are honestly the worst, I think, because it's not meeting a ton of people at once, but the guilt involved if you don't remember every single one of them! I still hate large family gatherings for that reason, because (a) you see all of them so rarely, people can really change (or just grow up, or get much older) between visits, and (b) they always seem to know you, and take your not-knowing as offense (whether they say it to you or just mutter to your parents, later).
I still get the heebie-jeebies from just thinking about large family gatherings, after all the times growing up when I'd try to figure out who-was-who ahead of time (as prep before my parents shoved me in one direction or another to 'go be social!') -- and my mother would say, "that's your seventh cousin, on your paternal grandfather's side. How can you not know your seventh cousin?"
My sister and I used to tell each other that what we needed pre-gatherings was some kind of a pre-test. Like, flashcards with relatives' names and faces, so we could study up rather than being thrown in cold. Bleah.
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Date: 3 Dec 2010 06:35 pm (UTC)I still get the heebie-jeebies from just thinking about large family gatherings, after all the times growing up when I'd try to figure out who-was-who ahead of time (as prep before my parents shoved me in one direction or another to 'go be social!') -- and my mother would say, "that's your seventh cousin, on your paternal grandfather's side. How can you not know your seventh cousin?"
My sister and I used to tell each other that what we needed pre-gatherings was some kind of a pre-test. Like, flashcards with relatives' names and faces, so we could study up rather than being thrown in cold. Bleah.