The Art of Avoiding My Family

During the three months of summer my house becomes infested with aunts, uncles, and cousins. The first of them arrive around the last week of school and the last of them leave 2-4 weeks before school starts. This leaves me with barely enough time, space or sanity to get ready for the on coming school year. To keep my sanity and avoid fights I have this system.

Step 1: Play music only you like. If you play music that your relatives can't stand they naturally avoid the area. The key to this is to play it quiet enough that it can't be heard all over the house, but loud enough that you can only hear people talk to you from the room your stationed in. If you set the volume just right your relatives will not come in to talk to you. When they want something of you they'll try to get your attention by other means which are easily ignorable. If it's important enough they will enter your room anyways to get your attention. (Having to actually go into your room can make them quite angry at times so beware when using this technique.)

Step 2: Avoid entering rooms where there are people. This is by far the most difficult. Since the art of teleportation is imperfect and most of us aren't ninjas this becomes the most difficult part. Most houses have it where you have to go through certain rooms to get to others. The problem with entering rooms with other people in them is that since you are in sight they remember things they wanted to ask you or have you do. By entering these rooms you can get caught in unwanted conversations or lectures and you can end up a lackey, getting drinks for someone because they saw you enter the kitchen, taking out the trash, etc.

Step 3: Don't enter or stay in any room where an argument is brewing. If you are already in a room when you sense an argument starting get out ASAP. You don't want to be stuck in a room with a fight in progress. Eventually someone will ask your opinion on something, thus dragging you in against your will. You can sense a fight brewing if voices start to get raised, they start clenching their fists, etc. The other part to this is to not enter a room where an argument is in progress. You can make an argument worse by entering at the wrong moment. In some cases you will get dragged in and there's a good chance you won't be coming out unscathed.
     MAC (my dad's sister) has an uncanny ability to enter an argument at the worse possible moment. Instead of just leaving arguments alone or even trying to defuse them, she will step part way into the room make a passive aggressive comment that has very little to do with the argument and step out increasing the anger of the people fighting. THIS IS A BAD IDEA DON'T EVER DO IT!

WARNING: These techniques have only been proven to work on my family so use caution when attempting on yours.