The Great Uncle Jeff or What Is It About Family?

When I say family, I mean those who are not my parents. I mean my aunt, uncle, cousins, and grandparents. More specifically I mean my father's side of the family. The normal family. And this week the most annoying family on this side of the universe.

Being unemployed and unwilling to move back to the super small town I'm from, I have taken up temporary residence with my grandparents. Both are very kind, reasonable, generous people and I love them dearly, but damn. Living with them sucks. There are many reasons why is sucks, but here are just a few: instead of getting the room downstairs (away from them and with a separate entrance) I have the one next-door to my grandma and down the hall from my grandpa (his severe snoring has kept them in separate bed for a while), no more fun stuff to eat and lots of veggies, no HBO as if I paid for it they would surely claim it a waste of money, scrutiny of all financial transactions, job hunt and loan consolidation concerns, and the same story repeated one million times.

And out of all the things that irritate me about living with them, it's the last one I hate the most. Because some of the stories are long. And the rest are really fucking long. And half of them have to do with the wunderkinds (i.e. my cousins).

I love my cousins, Elizabeth (5) and Katherine (6). They're clever, sweet children and they love spending time with me. What I don't like about them is their father. My Uncle Jeff. He's eight years younger than my father and the favorite son (denied by my grandmother, but seems to be the truth). They love my dad, don't get me wrong, but he was a handful growing up. "So smart, but so lazy.." as my grandmother would say. He spent most of his young years in boarding school while my grandfather was in the army and my grandmother tended to Laurel (my dad's sister who died of cancer at 8). Then Jeff came around. And Jeff was the most well-behaved, intelligent child on Earth.

And because Jeff is so perfect (he can do anything, don't you know?), his children are the same. Which makes it impossible to stand to hear anything my grandmother says about them because not only is it sugared with perfection, iced with genius, but it will be repeated twenty more times. I'll confess that I still am bitter that as a child my grandparents were, on the whole, uninterested in playing with my sister and I, so we were sent to a back room to play with each other while they both pay great attention to my smaller cousins. My grandma even went with them to Disney World. The place I didn't go to until taken by my Aunt Sonia (Jeff's wife) her mother when I was in fifth grade.

So, lucky me. I was living with the gparents when they decide to breeze through Atlanta before traveling to Hilton Head and their condo for the weekend. And if the (well-meaning) flack I was getting from grandparents wasn’t enough, I had to endure three days of it from my uncle and aunt. Who both told me I should go to GA Tech and major in technical writing when I was searching for colleges in high school. And since my creative writing degree hasn't gotten me anywhere, I got to listen to them, really my uncle, tell me that I should've gone to Tech. Now that I'm older, I think my disdain for him is a bit more obvious than it used to be. Truthfully, I used to like him a great deal... but that was before he said I looked pregnant in my Easter dress when I was seven years old. So after the college lecture, he tried to be very nice to me.

I've also realized that my cousin Katherine (not Kate, she insists) is a bit of a bitch. After my grandmother had her read some story about Ireland and bells ("can you believe she can read that well"), we were entertained by some stories about her. One about her approaching two women smoking outside at a party and telling them that "smoking is a choice" and that they should stop. My grandmother thought it was darling. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't that sound a tad bit bitchy?

But perhaps it's just me. After all, I'm just the spawn of the eldest; I'm no daughter of Jeff the Miraculous. We'll see. Sooner rather than later, since they come back to town next week.

i sat on jake gyllenhaal's face and disturbing discussions with nine year-old boys

My life is sadder now than it was two months ago. Which I must say is a feat seeing as two months ago all I did was go to school, go to work, go to the movies and occasionally go out with friends. Now, upon graduating the number of friends still around has greatly decreased, I don't go to as many movies, I obviously don't go to class any more and I spend most of my time with the 9 year-old boys I take care of. The kids are great, but the longer I know them, the more comfortable they become with me and the more disturbed I become.

Case and point, I was watching two best friends, Nate and Jack one night while their parents went to a fundraiser. We are playing Monopoly. Jack and I have to constantly remind Nate when to go because he has been hypnotized by the tv. We're in the middle of the game, reminding Nate, yet again, that it is his turn and he should hurry.

"Nathan," Jack says in his slow, monotone voice, "It's your turn."

"I know, I know," Nathan replies, still staring at the tv screen.

"Then go!"

"I can't help, it I love the tv. I have to watch it."

"Well, if you love it so much, maybe you should marry it." This is the phrase that comes spewing from my mouth. Typical kid-speak.

The boy's giggle and then Nate goes on, "But if I marry the tv, how will I have children?"

"You would have sex with it," Jackson replies nonchalantly. Now the "to weird to talk about with a babysitter" alarm is going off in my head. Or maybe this is too weird to talk about with anybody.

"Those would be weird babies." Laughing.

"They would have tv heads and people bodies." More laughing.

"But wait," Nate stops to think, "I couldn't have sex with the tv. Because there's no hole."

I freak out, which just cause them to laugh harder, and then close the subject. Sure, I knew about sex with I was nine. My father checked out this cartoon from the video store when I was seven that explained the whole process to me. Cute little sperm in a top hat and tails dancing with an evening gown-clad egg. Hell, I remember being in third grade and there being a rumor that a student had sex in our elementary school library. But I would never, and I mean never, talk about it with anyone who wasn't my age. Especially my babysitter. That would be weird.

But apparently not weird for these kids. Shortly after I began to take care of Nate, he informed me that I had "big ones." I thought it was a one time thing, said to see the reaction he could get from me. But then a few weeks ago, Will, one of Nate's friends, informed us that the real meaning of the Outkast verse "I just want you in my caddy" was about having sex in the back of a car. Nathan then started to ask me about sex in certain movies. And then, the tv incident, followed by a weird conversation he, Jack and I had, which had originally started out with me talking about how much I liked Super Mario games and digressed into if I would marry and have children with Mario and Luigi if they were real.

All this leading up to the day that I sat on Jake Gyllenhaal's face.

We had planned to have a large water fight since it was summer and there was nothing better to do. Knowing that I would get soaked, I brought my sweats and a thick t-shirt for maximum coverage. Best not to take chances since the kids had been acting so weird lately. To make a long story short, Will said he could see where my bra was and I decided to zip my jacket up and dry. As I walked down the stairs, covered with puddles of water, I fell and broke my toe.

I'm injured, so we pack everything up, go inside and change. Nate's mother, who works out of her office at home, advises me to soak my foot in a pot of ice water for the swelling. I get the kids snacks and they start to play PS2. I make my way to the back room to watch them, sit down, and soak my foot. I place the pot down and plop onto the couch.

"I think you sat on that guy's face," Nate says.

"What?!" I'm thinking the worst.

Nate repeats himself. 'You sat on that guy's face."

I'm really confused now. "What do you mean by that, Nate?'"

Throwing his hands up in the air, he slides behind Jack and Will who are playing Lord of the Rings. He reaches underneath me and yanks out the GQ I bought with Jake Gyllenhaal on the cover.

"You were sitting on this guy." Nate hands me the magazine.

I breathe a sigh of relief. "Ohhhh." Thank God I had it wrong. I open the mag and begin to read. Nate retreats to his spot, sits down and then looks over at me.

"Why? What did you think I meant?"