At Least They're Committed

I embrace the missing slat in the verticle blinds because when I sit here and grin at my computer I appear sinister . . . one eye, bangs and my twisted smile with way too many gums. Heh. Yes, I KNOW I’m a little dark and I’ve come to realize that when I tweet sober it’s equally or more indiscernable or twisted than when I tweet drunk! Upon winding down my work day, I extolled upon how bored I am because the fear factor has lost its charm at home. I mean, Miss Lily lives in our home and I’ve not brought a stuffed boar or deer head or clown or human remains in to terrify her in months. MONTHS!

My Dad’s Aunt Glady, his favorite and ours as well, when she was, like, 80, was asked by her doctor what she was eating . . . she said anything in a can. She lived in the wooded areas of Michigan and her husband, Uncle Al, had raised the beagles we adopted as pets and hunting dogs until he died because he got drunk and was driving and other people got hurt, but back then there was no such thing as a DUI. As she’s telling my dad about her doctor’s visit I’m looking around her clean, but oh-so cluttered yellow living room adorned with glass figurines of beagles and cats and photos and antique bottles and a mounted turkey foot with its middle claw pointing distinctly skyward. “And then he asked me,” this elegant lady said, her hair and makeup perfectly done, her smile gleaming, “Glady, are you still drinking beer, and I say, ‘does it come in a can?’”

Hazel, my dad’s mom, never liked me. Everyone always said it was maybe because I was such a ‘Royce,’ her maiden name. Too much like her. I was OK with that. None of us like to really see ourselves. But throughout the years I began to question that and now I’ve realized a LOT. Revolutionarily, at Hazel’s memorial, as I sat and chatted with my Dad’s and my beautiful Aunt Glady and Aunt Bolly (who is still with us) about how, for Christ’s sake, if you’ve got great breasts, why would you not flaunt what you got? Ya know? And a family member, don’t remember who it was, stood back, watching us and finally said, “You are all so alike, you are the same” and my dad gasped and we realized that I was not a Royce, not like my grandmother, which is precisely why she hated me! I was like her husband! I AM a GRAY!!!! From the Sutherland Clan in Scotland! No wonder she hated me. Heh. That’s a great sense of pride for me.

I still want that turkey foot flipping the ‘bird,’ and I will have it!