Monday, August 17, 2009

The Prisoner

I'm not a big fan of reunions - family or otherwise. I like members of my family, but I'd rather determine when, how and who I interact with.

My mother doesn't see it that way sometimes.

Annually, one of my uncles has some gathering which my mother passively-aggressively gets us to go. My sisters and I will get an email from her saying that "I told Tom you'd all be there!". Excuse me?

As with my father's side of the family, most of my first cousins are 20+ years older than us kids are. Their kids are our age. And now, those kids have kids, so my cousins are grandparents. It's all very odd.

I don't mean (?) to be point fingers, but I guess when some of those second cousins have kids when they're 16 and become grandparents at 35.

I don't even know these second cousins. I certainly don't know any of my third ones (assuming that's what they're called) - and most of those are under seven years old. So my uncle points out Shawn....or Sean. I really have no idea. Nor do I figure I'll ever have to.

"He looks pretty good - considering he just got out of the slammer 10 days ago, huh?". I think he said that tongue in cheek. I think. My cousin Marilyn just looked at Tom (behind his back) then at me and scowled and rolled her eyes. It seems she was not happy Sean/Shawn was there.

I conversed with only a few folks and sat and ate some grub, when all I really wanted to do was get the hell out of there. While I sat and ate, I'd hear others mention Sean/Shawn. Apparently his stint in the clink was for the last four years. I have no idea what he did to get himself there.

I will say this, he seemed nice enough to the little kids - and Denton mentioned that on the drive home. Naturally that spurred a comment from me about what he might have been in for.

I have nothing against Sean/Shawn - I don't know him and I'm guessing I'll have very limited interaction with him at all, if ever. Hell, even with my best relations on my mother's side, I only see maybe them once a year. Maybe.

I'll give them all this though - they are all seemingly very accepting of Denton and myself, even after two decades they can't spell his last name correctly.


Song by: Howard Jones

1 comment:

cb said...

Well, hopefully he wasn't in jail for being "good with kids"....