My Boy Was Just Like Me (No)

On Easter I drove up to Hygiene to deliver my niece, Toots, to Don "Don't Call Me Grandpa" Johnson for a skiing vacation.

"Cat's in the cradle, people."

A few days before, Grandpa had sent me his essay on finance entitled DRONE AGE VAMPIRES. Here is the first sentence:

"Bankers like all people, range from the integrable and caring to the rapacious and immoral, regardless all follow their interests, rarely seeing the collateral damage they cause."

First of all, the good news is that bankers like all people! I guess that Channakuh movie with Jimmy Stewart was right, after all!!

Secondly, the word "integrable" is honestly terrible. As I drove up with Toots I explained to her that her grandpaps had a... shall we say... creative way of using words. Which is great if you're writing Finnegans Fuckin' Wake. Granddaddy, however, was writing an economic treatise with silver spoons and little boys blue, etc etc.

It was important that Toots, now 13, understood the extremely complex dynamic of the Johnson family if she wanted to retain her sanity. I would not blame her if she wanted to escape instead.

We arrived at Grandpa's palatial estate. I brought in the luggage and the skiing equipment. Gramps was in the garage, applying Windex to his Rolls. Windows, plate glass, gold hood ornament... Maria swooped in and screechingly criticized the size of Toots' suitcase.

"No, no, NO!" she squawked. "We have to get your stuff in a smaller case."

After Maria transferred everything from the large suitcase to a slightly smaller suitcase (Toots gave me a look; run! I wanted to say), she insisted we sit down to have a light snack. 

"Um, actually, I have to have Easter lunch with Mom..."

"SIT."

We sat at the table before a Corinthian bowl of figs and crystal decanters.

"My uncle is soo weird!" Toots piped up. "He was listening to this music with these Japanese girls who are my age! They were jumping around and going RAWR RAWR RAWR...!"

Toots got up and punched the air and swung her legs. Don Johnson and Maria stared blankly.

"And he has all these paintings of himself all over his walls! Have you seen them? He's soo weird! And then later he was working out with these barbells while he watched TV. He's sooo weird!!"

"You know what you have to do, Greg?" Maria softly screeched. "You have to make sure you get good resistance!! It's on the down stroke that you get the muscle worked, not on the up!! Did you know that?"

"Uh..."

Then Maria pivoted to another subject: "DID YOU READ THAT HILLARY CLINTON BOMBED LIBYA BECAUSE QADAFI WAS TRYING TO START A PAN-AFRICAN CURRENCY? DID YOU KNOW THAT?!?!"

"Well..."

"SHE WAS DOING THIS BECAUSE HE WANTED A PAN-AMERICAN (sic) CURRENCY!! AND SHE HAD HIM KILLED! AND SHE'S GOING TO KILL US ALL IF SHE'S ELECTED!! SHE'LL KILL EVERYONE!!! AND YOUR LITTLE DOG, TOO!!! I HOPE YOU ARE VOTING THIS YEAR, GREG! YOU MUST VOTE! AIIIIEEE."

"Sure, sure, anyway..."

As I tried to steer the conversation back to little Japanese girls, something popped off Grandpa's chair. This was a chair he had designed. He had a patent lawyer and soon his chairs would be widely seen in every warehouse, henhouse, outhouse, and whorehouse in the tri-county area. But little parts kept shooting off.

Grandpa looked at me. "Yeah, I need to get a larger rubber knob to keep it on..."

"Right. A large rubber knob. To keep. It. On."

Maria rushed over to capture the chair bit. Nothing was allowed on her hyperclean floor. She routinely swept for protozoa.

"Next year I'll have the design patented and then the factory in Finland will start to manufacture them, a few thousand, and then..."

Grandpa droned on. Finally, Toots interrupted him.

"Oh, that sounds really integrable, Grandpa."

She gave me a sly look. I winked at her. The little stinker was going to do just fine in this family. Just fine.


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BRACKET UPDATE:

And the winner of this year's tournament.....

Could it be anyone else?!?

Hu hu h uhh hu huh hu huhh huh huh hu h u hu hu hu