Cousins and Curses
My cousin emailed me, recently.
Yeah, I’m one of those people that talk to cousins beyond the age of 16 or so. Which, so far as I can tell, is actually pretty rare for white people. Actually, I have met and can name a number or second and third cousins, and great-aunts and great uncles. An alarming number of these people have double names. Sandy Kay, Sunny Rhea, Barbara Jean.
No Bubbas, though. That I know of.
Anyway, yes, one of my normal-named cousins emailed me, thanks to the miracle of MySpace. And, I replied… and then nothing.
My sister called last night. I asked about it, because my family has a tendency to occasionally decide that they’re pissed at you from afar, and then you’re not real sure what you did.
Turns out that my cousin is busy. I knew she’d had a big year in 2006. She and her boyfriend moved from Florida to Texas, with her parents, and she’d had a baby girl last October. She’s 21, and she was supposed to get married—they were going to start their new family in Texas. But, it turns out that the boyfriend ran off, back to Florida, and now Cousin and CousinBaby are living with Aunt and Uncle, next door to a pair needy ElderlyGreatAunts who prompted the Texas Transition in the first place.
Cousin is in the familial vortex. And, she’s stuck.
Guess it would be worse if she had no familial vortex to get stuck in.
This is a classic example of (A + B(.5) + c/c) (X FACTOR) == WTF. It’s an equation moving into the future and the new century, because, dammit, my generation is not exempt. And, the cousin in question is not a stupid girl, by any means. She did really well in school, has an high IQ, etc. Her biggest flaw is that she’s a bit bull-headed. Well… a lot bull-headed. She got the inheritable Temper.
Some of it is just blood.
And, not having read my blog last week, my sister brought that up after relaying the drama. “There’s just something wrong with our genes…”
“Yeah, I wrote about that the other day. Makes it really scary to try to build anything…”
“I know!”
Now, just to be clear, the bar is set really low cousin-wise. So long as none of us participate in the mutilation and murder of a teenage girl, we’re all doing better than my uncle’s stepson, who should still be in jail for another year or two. Basically, for one of us to beat him out for the Most Pathetic Cousin ribbon, we’d have to actually commit an act of domestic terrorism. And, as a bonus, he’s only related by marriage.
For every cloud there is a silver lining. Heh.
tags: family
