You Can’t Chew Your Relatives

This evening I saw my mum’s family for the first time in years.  Awkward.

Best part was reminiscing with my sister and cousins about funny shit that has happened in our family.  It happened when my brother Nick was 10 and my other brother Tim was 8.  Nick was annoyed at Tim, so he pissed in a cup and lined up a shot with a golf club, intending to cover the unsuspecting Tim with piss.  Instead, when the club hit the cup, it sent the contents upwards and backwards, covering Nick with his own urine.   Oh fuck it was the funniest thing I ever saw. 

When Nick and Tim got older, like 16 & 18, their fights became so insane they dented the walls at our old house. Double brick walls.  Nick goes mental if you walk in front of the screen for even a second when he’s playing FIFA World Cup.  If he sees a non-white person on the street while he’s driving, he screams out of the window at them while he goes past.  I don’t say anything to him about this because he scares the shit out of me and could easily smash me, and probably would do it too.  He’s such a fucking meathead.  But he cried in Dear John.  He loves romantic movies like the Notebook and Valentine’s Day.  He asked my sister to come to the movies with him because none of his friends would.   His favourite TV show is Gossip Girl.  I wish I was making this up.    I’m so fucking confused.

Remembering names is such a nightmare – in my mum’s family I have 8 aunts & uncles, 34 cousins and their respective partners.  Half of the women have a name starting with M.  Every time I turn up several women are pregnant and have more children than I remember them having last time.  Two of my aunts name have the same first syllable and they even look the same.  Yikes.

 But the best awkwardness was with my mum.  She was drunk by the time I arrived and quite emotionally unstable.  There’s always shit with her family, much of which is other relatives’ meanness but some of which might be self-generated, and this year she’s supposed to be "coming out" to her family as having recently divorced… again.  She would randomly cry at times during the night and I don’t know what to do with that except pretend it’s not happening.  Then we’d be in a group talking and she’d interrupt to point at one of my uncles going past saying "that man… he is always so mean to me and he blah blah blah and I hate that man."  She says it kind of quietly but so that he’ll hear, and it’s out of place in the conversation so no one knows how to react.   Then she was insisting on driving us home because "2km is too far to walk" and I had to find a way to say no thanks I don’t want to die without her misconstruing it as an attack on her.

There were some other fun times.  My sister did this really loud obviously sarcastic laugh at one of the lame things one of my uncles said that made the situation totally awkward.  Another one of my aunties told me she prays for Jones and I, just out of the blue randomly.   My grandma barred my brother Chris for no reason that anyone can see.  

There are some really nice normal people in that family who I get along with quite well when I have the relevant social skills available, but so many people who bitch behind each other’s backs and start fights and are drunk and ridiculous and insane.  

So I decided I’m going to show up for my grandmother’s 90th next month, even though I’m not formally invited and didn’t even acknowledge her presence there tonight.   I’m going because I realise they’re all lunatics, and it’s hilarious. (Except my mum.  She’s just messed up and it’s not funny.)   I’ve never felt so normal before, and I damn well like it.