Well, I will be damned. There is insanity in my own family, but at least I share no DNA with this one.

I am back. After two nights with extended families, I have lived to tell. I am somewhat amazed by it all. This time I have stories of my families' insanity. Well, it is my uncle and he is married to my aunt who is/was my father's sister. So I do not share any genetic material with my uncle (at least none that I know of).

He was always a strange bird to me. I spent a bit of time with my aunt and cousins when I was growing up and these were the cousins closest in age to me. I always liked hanging with them. My uncle was a lawyer, though not much of one. He retired and actually did a stint as my delivery car driver, which was always interesting.

I, my father as well, could never figure him out. He is a bright guy. He was too good and competitive to play bridge with my mother and aunt. He played with the big boys. He also had a pipe, though I do not know if he was a pipe smoker (see pole smoker as well).

According to my cousin, his eldest son and a psychiatrist, my aunt and uncle set up my cousins for doom. Where my aunt taught them to fear the inside world of your mind and body, my uncle taught them to fear the outside world. He has not been the same, so I am told, since his brother died (at 40) over thirty years ago.

He is mute until he gets liquored up. That is with great regularity. He likes his rum and diet Coke. When at my mother's, I end up fixing his drinks. The best, can I call it that, was when my father was in his final death throws. He is lying in bed not quite fully in this world but not quite in the next (?) one either. He sees my uncle and turns to me and says "Did you fix your uncle a drink, yet?" Yeah, dad, I brought the fucking liquor cabinet to the hospital! Besides, if I had, I was not sharing with him or anybody else. That was my drunk and nobody was going to stop me.

Anyway, I have gone a long way for nothing, I am about to leave my mother's with the Lad. It turns out that my cousin needed a ride to the subway as he has a Metropass and lives on the line. He always liked the subway. His parents were going to take him, but I live on the line one stop from him, so I volunteered. It just made sense to me. Besides, this is a cousin that got me into music, so I owe him something (just not sure what).

It is while I am waiting for him that my uncle is trying to explain to me that his son has a Metropass. It dawned on me that either he is a blabbering idiot or he thinks I am a moron. I mean, who cares, and besides I know what a Metropass is and would assume that if he just wants a ride to the subway that he has and uses one (like my brother in law). I am just not sure why he felt the need to tell me about that. Was he making conversation? If so, he just should have maintained the silence that we engage in. I do not speak to him and he does not speak to me.

Besides, he made it abundantly clear at my brother's wedding, that my brother is his favorite. He said that while the video tape was rolling at his table with the microphone in hand. I am not bothered as he is not my favorite uncle. That one falls to my mother's brother in BC. As well, I really liked my aunt (who died last year) Rita's husband, David, who died in 1980. He was the first adult that never talked down to me, he spoke to me as a human and not a child. He also drove Jaguars, let me sit up front, and play with the toggle switches as he drove. He was a cool dude, smoking those More cigarettes.

I may go into the evening at the Outlaws' tomorrow. Ciao!