Long story short -- my father-in-law and uncle-in-law came today to buy some appliances from a friend of ours. While my father-in-law seemed willing to stretch the "necessary family business" clause to its limits to talk and joke and be basically human, my uncle was cold as a witch's dead penguin. If I said anything to him related to the task at hand, he answered as minimally as possible. If I said anything unrelated to the task, he totally ignored it.
In short, I was officially shunned today. He even gave the serious cold-shoulder routine to Gina, who is not officially DF'd. I was amused in a sense. So childish, so strange. I was also disturbed. It made me feel anxious and uncomfortable. Not sure exactly why. Gina later said she felt the same way. We both just wanted it to be over.
Which raises the question -- will we ever let it happen again? Good question, I don't know. If the same situation came up again, what would we do? We could have avoided it by simply not telling Gina's family that the appliances existed. Of course, it was the uncle that caused the stress. We could mention that we don't want anyone to come along that will shun us, but they'd probably slip into JW-persecution mode and say that they shouldn't come either, then. I'm thinking seriously about cutting these people out of my life altogether. They may simply not be worth the trouble.
After they left, I went and bought a bottle of champagne. Once properly chilled, we popped it and celebrated our first official shunning. Have a drink with us, and rejoice in the knowledge that you will never be the one shunning someone because a publishing company tells you to.
*clink!*
Dave