It's like looking in a mirror, except minus the part where my mom lost her friggin' mind and ruined the whole series.
Case in point: we used to do Thanksgiving at my house. My mom's siblings would all fly in from Chicago, my grandparents would drive down, and the holiday would usually be spent watching football and stuffing our faces with enough food to render us clinically comatose. It was a fine process that seemed to be going swimmingly, at least until a few years ago.
See, I only have two aunts and one grandma. Well, I did. Grandma's dead now.
"Alright Johann, thanks for making this awkward."
You're welcome!
So at the time, I had two aunts and a grandma, and I wish I could phrase this any other way but they all hated each other's guts. I mean, I love them and all, but good lord did they despise each other. Anytime these three were in the room, it was a given that whatever conversation ensued between them would be rife with snide insinuations and backhanded compliments. We - that is to say, the rest of my family and I - had all gotten very good at ignoring these awkward spiteful interjections, and it was an unspoken rule that, should any bickering ensue, we would simply let them have at it until they tuckered themselves out like little puppies. Hatred puppies.
As is usually the case with most family feuds, this thinly-veiled antagonism could only gain so much pressure until it finally exploded. I was young and don't remember all the details, but I'll do my level best to give a factual account, being sure to take only as much artistic license with the story as I want because I'm the author and shut up. First, a bit of necessary back story.
My two aunts (we'll call them Red and Blue) wanted to murder each other. Red is the daughter of my grandma (we'll call her grandma) and Blue is related by marriage. Blue had taken quite the disliking to my grandma, which is one of the main reasons why Red hated her, as Red generally got along with my grandma fairly well. End back story.
By the time the Thanksgiving dinner was ready, the air was already thick with tension. Blue had been taking potshots at my grandma throughout the afternoon, and Red (who's never had much restraint to begin with) was ready to take a hatchet to her skull. Grandma, who I remember fondly as being quite the badass, was also fed up with Blue, and it was only a matter of time before the family dinner turned into a three-way UFC cage match. In addition to all this, my mom's brothers (who were perpetually annoyed by Red) were getting sick of what they perceived as Red's increasingly flighty and stupid behavior. My mom was doing her best to keep things calm, but there's only so much one woman can do to combat years of dysfunctional family issues. Everyone was ready to explode, and it was simply a matter of who would fire first.
Imagine enjoying a nice Thanksgiving dinner with five of these at the table.
The straw that broke the proverbial camel's back came when Blue made some particularly nasty remark about grandma. Red, who had been stewing throughout the day, just lost her shit. I mean...goodness gracious. A mightier bitch has yet to be flipped as the one that she flipped that day. Grandma and Red engaged Blue in a verbal battle worthy of song, and my uncles seemed to decide that they might as well start screaming too because why not.
After much cussing, accusing and slander, everyone sort of left. Grandma and grandpa drove home early, Red and Blue were about to slit each other's throats, my normally jovial uncles were fury incarnate, and my mom was in tears. Truly, Thanksgiving was in shambles. Everybody filed out of the house, leaving my dad and I sitting awkwardly at the table by ourselves. We watched everyone leave, we looked at each other, and then we looked at the table. What we saw looked a lot like this.
My dad, ever the fountain of wisdom and knowledge, grabbed his silverware and exclaimed "hell yeah, more of us! Dig in kid!"
Dinner was ruined, but my dad and I feasted like kings that day. It was a real bonding experience.
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