These go to eleven

As usual, my mom hosted Thanksgiving dinner. The only person who decided to come from my father’s side of the family was his mother. Most of my mom’s family lives on the east coast, so my grandparents, aunt, uncle, two cousins, and my sister were the only others present. I’m just glad my dad’s brother and his wife didn’t invite themselves over this year so they could eat the vast majority of our food, steal all our leftovers, and go on about themselves like they usually do. However, there was still plenty of dysfunction, partly because my grandpa, uncle, and cousin all have Aspberger’s Syndrome. Here are some highlights from the evening*:

• My dad lied about having to work and actually went to a friend’s Thanksgiving dinner instead of his own family’s.
• We found out that morning from my dad that my grandma had broken her wrist and still made three desserts using only one hand. She has trouble balancing, but she refuses to use a cane or a walker, and she fell. (Not to mention the fact that she drinks and weighs about 80 lbs.) Last Christmas, she fell into an end table, broke a lamp, and sent a bowl of food flying facedown into the carpet. Needless to say, I ended up being her chauffeur for the evening.
• My grandpa freaked out in front of everyone because no one else was “dressed up” and my grandma made him wear gray dress pants that weren’t as comfortable as his typical navy blue trousers.
• My aunt forgot my sister’s birthday present, so she decided to make the half-hour round trip back home to get it. In the meantime, my mom was trying to keep the food warm and my grandpa was chomping at the bit to eat. He proceeded to make up all these scenarios of how she could possibly be delayed further, which would mean he’d have to wait longer.
• We had to have white rice, even though no one in our family is Asian. My cousins, uncle, and grandpa are too picky to eat wild rice (which is native to the area) or mashed potatoes. At least it wasn’t as bad as last year when we had six starches.
• Even though we had the table set with our best silverware, crystal goblets, and white lace tablecloth, we used paper plates. I can understand that my mom didn’t want us to have to deal with more mess, but it was still pretty white trash.
• At the table, my grandpa couldn’t stop farting, my cousin dropped food onto the floor, picked it up and ate it anyway, and also licked his plate when he was finished. My grandpa refused to try anything with pumpkin it in because he didn’t like how it looked and said if the milk wasn’t Roundy’s that he wouldn’t drink it. (Luckily, it was.) He, as well as my aunt, told all these pointless stories about people know one else knows and when my grandpa didn’t follow the details exactly, he demanded a repeat. My grandma got annoyed and said, “Who cares? You don’t know who these people are!” and my sister and I tried not to die of laughter. She always makes snarky comments to us about him at the table, the best being, “He’s kind of slow sometimes.”
• I got yelled at by my grandpa and aunt for saying that the Falls Baptist Church is a cult, even though it really is. My mom and my sister were able to back me up on that one. Everyone I’ve met that goes there is nuts, including my old band director that cheated on his wife with a seventeen-year-old student.
• My 16-year-old cousin tried to tell another one of his lame “jokes” (usually ones by Dave Barry), and he unknowingly described the amp scene from Spinal Tap, which he has never seen before. Only he could take the humor out of that movie.
• My aunt had brought a cat encyclopedia and not only got my cat’s breed wrong, but also read all the pages aloud on the wrong breed. (She’s a RagaMuffin, not a Ragdoll or a Turkish Angora.)

*All of this is in good fun. They are all nice people that I love dearly, but can be very embarrassing at times.

At least there was some good food. We also celebrated my sister’s birthday that was two weeks ago, so we had a huge frosted chocolate chip cookie from Mrs. Fields. My mom also made fruit punch-flavored jell-o with orange sherbet and mandarin oranges and there was sherry cake, pumpkin and apple pies, and a pumpkin and nut dish. I also consumed the majority of the mashed potatoes and gravy.