(Originally written on July 15, 2009)
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I am currently sitting at a bar in the airport right now, having a beer while I await my flight to Philadelphia for yet another series of job interviews. This time, we’ll call the company B&B. B&B is a consumer packaged goods company that makes everything ranging from beauty products to over-the-counter drugs. Oddly enough, I didn’t even apply for the position that I’m interviewing for with them…or any position with them, for that matter. They actually recruited me from the MMR resume book. That kinda made me feel a little bit better about myself: out of the 27 graduates in my class, they chose me. I haven’t really taken their interest all that seriously (until now, obviously) because the first time they called me was back in May. Then, it was early-to-mid-June before they called me for a phone interview and told me that they wanted whomever they hire to start working by mid-July…which is today. And that obviously didn’t happen. Anyways, I eventually had another phone interview about a week-and-a-half ago, at the end of which they told me that they wanted to fly me to Philly for what would have been last week for in-person interviews. Well, after two-and-a-half slow months, I’m finally making my trip up there.
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I didn’t sleep well at all last night, even though I took my sleeping meds. Thus, I got up this morning feeling funky/sick…great for packing and traveling.
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I have decided that Friday (once I’m back home) I’m going to stop drinking and start working on getting into shape and being happy again.
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This past weekend was my family reunion with Beast’s side of the family. Every year we visit a different location and this year it was Asheville, North Carolina. The previous reunions that stick out most in my mind include: Nashville, Tennessee; Lexington, Kentucky; Washington, D.C.; Cedar Point, Ohio (the last reunion Beast’s dad, my grampa, was alive for); and Niagara Falls, Canada. I always enjoy these family reunions because all of my cousins are really close in age to Chip, Dale, Ursula and me.
Bear with me here, I’ve got quite a few introductions to get through in order to make the storytelling easier:
We’ll start with Beast’s oldest brother, Aston (for Aston Martin; he collects cars, most of which he actually purchases on eBay). And Aston’s wife is Dippy; she’s the crazy aunt that always makes inappropriate comments and jokes. When we were younger, we all thought she was weird and were creeped out by her, but now that we’re older, we are equipped with the worldly knowledge required to understand her wonderfully lewd and sarcastic sense of humor. She’s awesome. Their son is my cousin Fire – and yes, he’s a ginger. The name “Fire” for him, though, actually works on several different levels:
- His gingerness, of course.
- He was a firefighter for a year or two.
- He has always been one who goes through phases where he is exceedingly fanatical about whatever it is that’s his flavor of the week, including girls. One year he was all about the Army and ROTC; the next year was drinking (underage); the next was being redneck; the next was firefighting…and you get the picture. And, I mean, he goes all out. For example, he got the firefighter emblem tattooed – quite large, I must say – on his upper arm…and, well, Fire isn’t a firefighter anymore.
There’s actually quite a sad story attached to Fire – and keep in mind that he’s my age (only 23). Beast comes from a family that was raised devoutly Catholic (hence the four kids), so we definitely behave more conservatively around Gramma and company. Anyways, the summer when we were 19, the family reunion was held at Niagara Falls (the reunions always take place in July, by the way). Fire had drunkenly proposed to Emma in June, his girlfriend of two months at that time, and insisted that she come to the reunion with him or else he wouldn’t come. So she came to the reunion and she stayed in a room with Dippy while Fire stayed in a separate room with Aston. They got married that August and bought a house together. Money was pretty scarce for them with Fire installing home theater and stereo systems and Emma working as a cashier at a fast-food restaurant. In order to make ends meet, Fire joined the Air Force in March with the intention of becoming an Air Force firefighter and left for two months of boot camp. While he was away, Emma had a friend move into the house with her to keep her company. Emma’s 21st birthday (she was a year older than Fire) was on the same day as Aston’s and Dippy’s wedding anniversary, about one month after Fire had left for boot camp, so the three of them went to dinner together. Emma didn’t even have anything to drink because she said she was feeling funny. The following morning, Emma’s friend walked by her room and found her in a blue state. Fire and Emma were only married for nine months. Fire immediately came home from boot camp and was given a year to come back and resume. However, Fire later declined and was honorably discharged. To this day, we still don’t know how Emma died.
What made Fire’s circumstances a little more strange was how he acted when he returned to the next reunion. For one thing, he was already back onto the dating scene a mere three months after Emma’s death…and the girl he was dating was also named Emma… Secondly, when asked about how he was holding up, Fire said that, hindsight 20/20, he thought they would have probably ended up getting divorced anyway… I guess that’s just how he was coping and getting himself through it all.
Well, a little over two years ago, Fire became an EMT (and he still is). Then, in late December 2007, we received the news that Fire was going to be a father. He met his baby-mama through work, she’s an ER nurse, and the baby was born last July (Fire didn’t make it to the last reunion because he was expecting). Now, what makes that sad and odd is that Fire continues to propose to his baby-mama (who already had another illegitimate child with a different guy, by the way) multiple times and she still, to this day, says no. He really does just want to do the right thing.
Then there’s my aunt Egoista and her husband Uncle Bob. She is definitely the black sheep of the siblings. She constantly tries to be the center of attention (and she’s 60 years old!) and she’s full of herself, gets pissy if she doesn’t get her way, has the worst sense of humor, and her obnoxious cackle of a laugh makes your ears bleed. Also, both when Grampa died and when we moved Gramma into an assisted living home, Egoista picked brutal, petty fights with her brothers and cut off communication with the rest of the family for a while – which I know Beast and Aston didn’t mind, they joked about it at the time. There’s really nothing special about Uncle Bob (hence the plain name); he pretty much keeps to himself and you can tell that he unquestioningly lets Egoista run the show. Their daughter is Bookworm. She was born three months premature with cerebral palsy and is confined to a wheelchair. She’s currently working on her Master degree to become a librarian. It’s kinda sad that none of us really know Bookworm that well; it’s hard because she can’t participate in everything that we do and Egoista keeps her on a short leash too. Bookworm and I do share our passion for beer, though!
And finally, there’s Scholar and his wife Cowpoke. As kids, Scholar was really malicious toward Beast: one time Scholar pushed Beast’s stroller (with Beast in it) down a hill for no reason and when Beast was four, Scholar convinced him to guzzle gasoline, telling him that it was just “sour water”. And that’s only two of the many examples, but I think they’ve gotten past it. I’ve dubbed him “Scholar” because he was a career student for quite some time: he’s got two Doctoral degrees, one in optometry and one in psychiatry (which he currently practices), in addition to a Master degree or two. He actually met Cowpoke while he was working on his last degree (psychiatry) and they just got married a couple of years ago. Cowpoke was working on her Doctorate in I-don’t-know-what when they met.
Scholar has three kids from his previous marriage. His oldest is Frenchie. The university she went to for undergrad requires that you declare a major after your sophomore year; she had absolutely no idea what she wanted to do, so she decided to major in French, the foreign language that she had taken in high school. She took a year off after graduating and is now about to start working on the second year in her Master of Social Work program. Then there’s Pollyanna. She is an incredibly unique spirit – I don’t even know how to describe her. She’s very Earthy, P.C., and exuberant. Wow. I really don’t know how to put Pollyanna into words. And Scholar’s youngest is Squint. Squint is and always has been shy/an introvert…except for this one year when he overcompensated for it by bothering the hell out of everyone…yea, he still does that a little bit – but nowhere near comparison to that one year. Anyways, he’s brilliantly intelligent and is currently majoring in Math.
Remember how I said that all of my cousins and I are conveniently close in age? Well here’s how we all lay out: Bookworm was born in 1983 (she’s 26); Frenchie was born in 1985 (she’s 24); Fire and I were born in 1986 (we’re 23); Pollyanna was born in 1987 (she’s 22); Ursula was born in 1988 (she’s 21); Squint was born in 1989 (he’s 20); and Chip and Dale were born in 1990 (they’re going to be 19 in August). phew! As I said earlier, none of us are particularly close with Bookworm. But Frenchie and I always paired up, as did Pollyanna and Ursula, and Squint, Chip, and Dale always grouped together. Fire has always been pretty close with all of us. We still pair up a bit, but now that we’re older, we really all pretty much hang out together.
Alright, so now that that’s out of the way, I can actually talk about the trip!
Like I said earlier, we went to Asheville, North Carolina this year. Thursday was day one and it pretty much just consisted of everyone arriving and then chilling in the lobby for the hotel happy hour. The most eventful occurrence of the evening was when the entire hotel power went out and switched to backup generators for about an hour. I have never experienced that before – the closest I’ve come was actually on another family reunion: a kitchen fire set off the fire alarm and the whole hotel was evacuated. It was 3am and we were on the 17th floor.
Anyways, the second day of this past reunion was absolutely nuts; Beast definitely overbooked the schedule. And it didn’t help that Pollyanna kept us an hour late after breakfast for personal issues (she does that a lot). We started off the day touring the Biltmore Estate. God, that place is gorgeous. During that process, we all got split up initially because Bookworm and Gramma are in wheelchairs and had to take the elevators instead of the stairs and couldn’t go in to some rooms. But then it just became too hard for the rest of us to remain together; I mean, there were so many of us and the Biltmore mansion was crowded and huge. Next up on Friday’s schedule was lunch at The Grove Park Inn, this really rustic old hotel that’s outside walls are constructed entirely out of massive boulders. The only problem was: Pollyanna was nowhere to be found when it came time to leave (not surprisingly, she managed to get separated all by herself) and she didn’t have her cell phone on. We waited for 20 minutes before Beast sent me back into the mansion via the exit in order to go backwards and try to retrieve her. So once all of us were finally reassembled, we headed to lunch. The Grove Park Inn was absolutely beautiful and the terrace where we ate had a gorgeous view of the cascading hillsides below. The lunch was quite lovely until Ursula exploded at me (even though we’re older, all of the cousins are still forced to sit at the “kid table”). Somehow, money came up into conversation and I made a vague reference to all of the money that she owes Beast and Martyr (which is a story for another day). No one else at the table other than Chip and Dale even knew what I was referring to and they would have thought nothing of it if Ursula had just shrugged it off. But no…my comment unexpectedly set her off and she bashed the shit out of me. I mean, she just didn’t stop – she ranted for probably 10 minutes (which felt like an eternity to me). I was awfully embarrassed – she really made a scene – and I just sat there an took it, not even defending myself against her outrageous accusations; I didn’t want to contribute anything whatsoever to her petty charades. Anyways, after that disaster, we toured the Highland Brewing Company brewery. That was by far the most fun we had all day: we got to drink copious amounts of six different varieties of beer and Beast, Dale, Squint and I beat Cowpoke, Scholar, Frenchie, and Chip in an exciting game of cornhole! When it came time to leave, I realized that I had forgotten to buy a t-shirt, so I went to do that just as everyone was piling into the car. It took me maybe five-to-seven minutes to make my selection and the dude threw in two pint glasses and a handful of bumper stickers for free. Just as I was waiting for the guy to bring back my change, Martyr came furiously charging into the brewery, barking at me to hurry up. I had no idea why she was so upset, seemingly out of nowhere. Even Beast was stunned by her sudden anger. It wasn’t until later that we realized that she just wanted to get back to the hotel so that she could take a nap before dinner. And we later had dinner and margaritas at a local Mexican restaurant to top off the day.
The original plan for day three was to drive the scenic Blue Ridge Parkway to Cherokee, North Carolina, have lunch there and check it out, and make sure to get back to the hotel early enough in the afternoon so that Gramma could take a nap before our big last dinner. Well, after about 45 minutes into the two-and-a-half hour drive, Beast receives a call from Scholar saying that they only had one-eighth of a tank of gas remaining. BAD news – the exits off of the Parkway are few and far between since it’s a government road. We ended up driving two hours out of the way to find the nearest gas station. The drive was incredibly swervy and I got carsick; I didn’t think it was ever going to end. Then, we were stuck at the gas station for a while because I’m pretty sure that all 17 of us used their one little unisex bathroom. Once that was all said and done with, we got back on the road and continued our trek to Cherokee. We eventually arrived at 1:45pm and ate at an Arby’s, then walked around the downtown area for an hour-and-a-half before returning to Asheville. During our downtime while Gramma had her nap, Beast told me that he and Aston were heading to the Grand Bohemian Hotel for a couple of drinks at the Red Stag Grill and asked me if I would like to accompany them – and you know I’ve never been one to turn down drinks! After our bar adventure, Beast, Aston, and I joined the rest of the family for our big dinner at a highly esteemed local Italian restaurant. So, it somehow came up at dinner amongst Chip, Dale, Ursula, Frenchie, Pollyanna, Squint, and me that I tend to talk out of the side of my mouth a lot when I get drunk. This really intrigued Frenchie and Pollyanna, so it was decided, based on the full support of the cousins, that I was going to get drunk – and let’s face it, my family kinda expects it of me at this point. Then, at the end of dinner, someone suggested that one of us give a speech/toast (although, aren’t toasts supposed to occur at the beginning of the occasion? Oh well, anyways…). Naturally, everyone pointed to Beast, but he declined, which is incredibly uncharacteristic of him. After about a minute of everyone pointing fingers at each other, my liquid courage kicked in and I volunteered my words. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but I’m confident that it was fitting and appropriate; everyone seemed to be smiling and nodding their heads in agreement throughout it. And I’m not going to lie, it made me feel really good – honorable, if I dare say.
After dinner, we all returned to the hotel and just kept it low-key for the remainder of the evening. The “adults” chilled in one room (Beast’s, as always) while all the cousins hung out in another (Chip’s, Dale’s, and mine – the apples don’t fall far from the party family tree). We were doing YouTube research (and by research, I mean we were all sharing funny and outrageous video discoveries that we’ve happened to stumble upon in the past and archive as awesome) in the sitting area while Chip stepped into the bedroom to make “the call” to his girlfriend. Suddenly, Chip called us into the room and the most unexpected sight was playing out in front of our eyes. You know when you’re a kid and you play in front of the windows at night when you’re at hotels because they become like mirrors? Remember when your mother told you not to change your clothes in view of them because they were still clear windows inward to everyone from the outside? Well, I guess this dude never learned that lesson. At a hotel across the way in a room with all of the lights on and the curtains fully opened, there was a totally naked obese man laying spread-eagle on his bed, crotch facing the window, masturbating. It was horrific. But it was like watching a car wreck: as awful as it is, you just can’t look away. And, us being the sick fucks that we are, we turned out the lights in our room so that we could continue to watch without him noticing. He even had a cigarette between goes! We entertained ourselves like this for about 20 minutes and then decided to end it on that note and call it a night.
Sunday morning simply consisted of breakfast and group photos before we all said our goodbyes and hit the road.
I love these reunions. I really wish we could see each other more, but it’s hard with all of us living all over the place. But at least I know I’ve got the upcoming reunion. I’ll just have to wait until next July!
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I checked in with Sly the other day and it turns out that his toe is healed and completely pain-free. My surgery was, in fact, a success! Woo-hoo!
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Posted by myk1 
Posted by myk1 