Too Many Aunts

I know I'm a couple of days late on this, but I guess it's time to update you on my Thanksgiving. Apparently all I'm posting about these days are holidays. So I guess you should expect the next two posts to come around Christmas and New Years, but honestly I don't know what I'll be doing for Martin Luther King Day, so I'm not sure if you'll even get a post in February. Sadly, this is just the way things are these days. I guess I should start by saying that I don't even really like Thanksgiving, in fact I'm not even sure it should be considered a Holiday. Really it's just an excuse to consume twice the daily limit of two thousand calories, which frankly I already do on a regular basis anyway, because that's how me and my insatiable appetite roll. I would like to say that I make up for my over consumption with a super metabolism and a strict exercise regimen but in reality I just keep gaining pounds, and continue to wear the same sized clothing to make myself even more appealing to the opposite sex (by the way, I'm still single!)

But again, I am getting off track here. Really this post doesn't even have anything to do with myself, for once I was not the absolute train wreck of the festivities. Generally during holidays I like to commit loud outbursts about inappropriate things which has resulted in several cases of family dissolution over the years. One Christmas I sat atop an air conditioning unit in Texas, sobbing while my younger cousins played touch football twenty feet away. Did I mention I was seventeen when this happened? But again, this Holiday was not about my outbursts but instead about the outbursts of everyone else.

It all began early that morning when my eighty year old aunt Peggy walked into our house and apparently completely lost all her facilities including speech, telepathy, and how to walk properly. So instead of heel toe, she face planted on to the pavement, and broke her nose. I'm not trying to say this was funny, because it absolutely was not. I generally don't advocate the bruising of the elderly. Though I feel that if you knew my aunt Peggy (who I believes birth name is actually Pegetha after what I like to believe was a forgotten ancient Roman goddess), you'd be able to find the humor in this situation.

See, I have this theory that every family has a dud. If there are multiple children born to a family, one of them is always going to be the less successful, the less attractive, less mentally able child. I say this not to be rude, but to educate. I once believed that I was the dud in our family, because my sister is exceedingly more awesome than I could ever hope to be. But then I remembered that I actually had a sister that died, and I'm not trying to be insensitive when I say this and no irreverence to the dead or anything, but one of us survived and one of us did not, so I guess I am the clear and undisputed winner in this case. So thankfully I am not the dud, but I digress out of her nine siblings my aunt Peggy sadly, is the dud. She is the most ridiculous person you could ever hope to meet, or have the misfortune to spend more than twenty minutes with.

Not that I don't love her, because I do. But she is completely ridiculous, and has absolutely no idea what is going on at any given time. Example: When my sister and I took her to the emergency room about an hour after her incident, the doctor inquired as to what happened and what was wrong with her, and she responded that "she had a sinus infection, and laryngitis, and that she needed Cadillac surgery, and that she needed to have her Cadillacs removed". If you can't guess the mention of a certain luxury car was actually misplaced for the eye affliction more commonly referred to as cataracts.

Now, I also have cataracts, and I would agree that if instead of cataracts you were suffering from Cadillacs, that you would absolutely need to get them removed and try to sell them above Kelly Blue Book value, but sadly this is not the case, and also not at all what the doctor asked. When he did inform her that her nose was broken, and we left the establishment her first words were "Well, at least my nose isn't broken." Which only goes to prove that not only was she just not listening at all, but also that she is the dud. I think I've proven my point.

Now sadly this was not the only aunt related incident of the day. You see, I was born into a family of melodramatics much like myself. I don't typically see anything wrong with over dramatic tendencies, as I am known to throw a hissy fit approximately fourteen times a day, I think it's good for the soul, and definitely good for the economy because every time I commit an outburst someone usually buys me something from Sonic, which I really appreciate. Though I could not even begin to compete with the theatrics brought on my aunt Dianne. She is the true thespian of our ilk. Usually she likes to show this off every Thanksgiving with a well thought out prayer. Last year she printed out no less than ten pages of prayers, which she had copied, collated, and stapled for every member of our sizable group. She also assigned equal parts to everyone there. It was like performing a badly rehearsed, badly choreographed elementary school Thanksgiving play, only it was all about God. Needless to say, it did not go well as I'm pretty sure a couple of my family members can't even read. So we all stood with hands clasped together for well over an hour as my drunken high school dropout cousins stumbled through declarations of thanks, as everyone eyed the cranberry sauce longingly. It was not a good time had by all.

But this year, she really stepped up her game as earlier in the year she was in a bad accident and is temporarily in a wheel chair and has a lot of free time on her hands. All seemed normal at first, there were no pamphlets passed out, there was just a simple bowing of the heads as my grandmother began to recite the normal prefood blessing. After she was done my aunt interrupted loudly "I'd just like to say we should take a moment to remember all those boys in Iraq (though she pronounced in Urrack) who are serving our country and can't be with their loved ones today". Although this sentiment could be considered sweet to most, I immediately knew that things were not on the up and up, as we don't have a single person in our family who is in the military. Not that I don't appreciate everything they do for us I guess, I just didn't see the need. I could immediately feel the nervous energy of my fellow family members as we all wondered what was coming around the corner.

That's when I noticed my aunt pulling her very own script from her purse, she held the paper in front of her face with one hand, as she wiped away a single stray tear with the other. She began to recite in the most sorrowful tone I have ever experienced "From the halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli. We will fight our countries battles, in the air, on land and sea...." Yeah, that's right motherfuckers she tearfully recited the entirety of the Salute to the Armed Forces. I wish I was fucking making this shit up. I couldn't possibly. It was absolutely horrible, it took her seventeen minutes to finish a fucking sentence. She was talking so slowly that I'm pretty sure she thought she was Nobel Laurette Maya Angelou. Well, if my aunt is Maya Angelou and I just didn't know it before, I finally know why the caged bird sings, and that's too drown out her horrible voice. I hope your Thanksgiving was a little less stupid.

It's The Great Racist Charlie Brown!

I would like to start this post off by saying that it features some highly offensive language in it. Well, actually no it doesn't but it would if I did some direct quoting. But instead I will substitute some choice words to describe someones race. The word I am trying to replace rhymes with bigger, but has an alternate beginning consonant. Do you get what I'm saying here? So instead of saying a word that is offensive to many, I'll substitute it with a word that applies to a group of people that offends me: Canadians. So if you see the word Canadian in this post, know that it really stands for something else. Do you hear what I'm trying to say? Okay, you get it? Good, then I'll start.

Last night in the hopes of finding something fun to do on Halloween, my sister and I along with a couple of our older cousins perused around the greater area of downtown Lake Charles. I won't begin to describe to tell you how pathetic the greater area of downtown Lake Charles is, but I'm sure you can guess. We were driving around looking for a haunted house exhibit that was going on last year for charity, but for one reason or another was not going on last night. In our unfounded search we came upon two horse drawn carriages perched by the Lake. For some reason we thought this would be a great idea, so we paid our thirty five dollars and hopped on.

I have ridden horse drawn carriages twice before. Once in New Orleans, and another in Memphis, Tennessee. These were good rides, very informative if not a little yawn inducing family activities. I expected something similar in this, but what I got was not at all what was expected. If I had looked closely before getting on this ride, I would have noticed that the driver was missing nearly all of his front teeth. Which in foresight does not bode well for the proceedings. Although now that I think about it that might actually be a prerequisite for carriage drivers. You are not fully qualified unless you are missing your molars.

But at the beginning I had no idea that not everything was on the up and up here. He drove us by the destroyed boardwalk that is under construction. He informed us that they were planning to build some "fancy things like restaurants and night clubs" though he said the word club as if it rhymed with boob. Which let me tell you in normal human pronunciation it does not. But beyond the normal realm of how words are actually said, things were fine. He drove us around the civic center, and the courthouse. He drove us around the loft apartments, and some of the downtown bars where a mass of people were converged outside waiting to get in. This was right around the time that he noticed that a group of people were doing the Lake Charles second annual "Thriller" dance.

Apparently this thirty something redneck did not at all recall his childhood when Michael Jackson was the end all and be all of pop stars. He was highly offended, the only way I could tell because this string of words sprung out of his mouth: "You know, a few years ago they were going to execute that Canadian (Gay Slur), they were going to give him the electric chair. He molested those kids you know? He had the gay sex with them, he did. But then when he died, he became a god damned hero. And then that Canadian turned himself white. I saw some pictures of that Canadian on the TV after he died, of when he was a kid. He was a cute little Canadian baby. But then he became a white woman, molesting all those kids. He molested kids, you know?"

First of all I would like to start by saying, I hate how people recycle old jokes. You know the one about Michael Jackson when people say "he started out a black man and ended up a white woman." Yes, that's frankly hilarious I get it. We should laugh at his personal choices, and his skin disorders, and his race. That is humor. If I were a redneck, I'd like to believe that I'd at least be clever with my racism. I'd like to think that I'd be original. All the while this is happening, my older cousin who is in the middle seat directly behind the driver started egging him on because he thought it was funny. I on the other hand did not find it funny at all. I kept repeatedly saying, that I was mortified. To see if he would stop. He did not stop. I actually told the man that I thought Michael Jackson was a national treasure. I'm not sure what kind of aneurysm made me decide to say that. May I tell you that when he was saying this we were riding through what could be described as the more ethnic part of our city?

I don't know how to drive that point home to you except to say that while he was pronouncing his very colorful view of "how things are" we were literally surrounded by African American trick or treaters and their parents. When I started to say something discreetly about that fact, he informed us that it wasn't important because he had a gun. Well, now that's just fucking fantastic. I was on an armed, racist, horse drawn carriage. I might as well be the ringleader in a fucking Ku Klux Klan rally. I'm not really sure what they do at KKK rallies, but I assume they collectively drink the blood of a goat, and then all beat their wives. Which doesn't really sound like my kind of people.

But I feel like towards the end, things started to look up. When we pulled back into the parking lot we came from, he parked the carriage. We all got off and began to pet the horse, and he came up to us and announced that "tips were appreciated." I looked him in the eye and said, "Well, racism isn't." And then we got in our car and left. I think that I am the modern day Martin Luther King. Aren't I? Well I think I am, and that's enough really.