I was in fifth grade. Florida was where we went to Disneyworld. It never entered my mind that eleven months later Florida would be my home. My sister was still an infant. My younger uncle was back from college – I think he was a senior – with all kinds of tales. He was at UVA and I thought he was the coolest thing since ever, but I was nine years old. I remember almost having an aneurysm at the dinner table when he told the baby float joke.
How do you make a baby float?
Put two scoops of ice cream on the baby in the blender and turn it on.
I almost fell backwards through the sliding glass door. Now that I’m thirty-eight I see both sides of the college senior. He wasn’t cool. He was an idiot, just like every other twenty-one year old male. I bet he was also scared to death. He was getting ready to graduate into a job market almost as bad as this one. His mother, my grandmother, didn’t think the joke was all that funny. I still think it’s funny to this day. He was showing off for me by telling the joke in front of a bunch of “adults”. My older uncle always brought me the cool gifts. Usually, until I was about seven they were noise makers: drums, bike horns, referee whistles. Asshole gifts that would rate an automatic beating if someone gave them to LMJ or at least the gifts would mysteriously disappear. I remember the gift he brought me then was a glazed wrought iron paperweight that had U.S. Steel embossed on the front. He told the story of how he and a team of fellow engineers or whatever he did got stuck in South America because they couldn’t get through security. They all had “forgotten” to take off their steel toed boots and wound up having to stay an extra day on the company’s dime. My older uncle is in the lower right of the picture, looking like he should be in Al Qaeda. My younger uncle is the one in the upper left of the picture that looks like a Filipino disco refugee. They both had a really big influence on me growing up, which explains some things.
I don’t think I’m done writing about this.
2 comments:
I love hearing about your family, LJ! Now you have to keep going, though. Who are the rest of the people in the pic? And why did y'all move to FL? And what did your Dad do in DC? Was your mom working then? Did you guys take road trips back to Pittsburgh to see your family? Did they come visit you? You may not think much of it now, but it's awesome that you are writing down these memories and stories. You know my aunt recently died and a lot of family stories died with her that I never bothered to write down, or even learn for that matter. Maybe LMJ won't care, but if she does, your memories handed down will be priceless!
Maybe I need to start writing down the things that only I know. It probably won't be in a blog, because I'm much too private.
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