Last Splash

Thursday, 27 December 2007

So, apparently, all my talk about not having a redneck Christmas was empty. On Sunday evening, I showed up at my parents' house for the Big Johnson Christmas to find one aunt (the one that married in) crying and another aunt (the one that is head of the family since my granny died) consoling her. They spent an hour moving from kitchen table to couch, speaking in hushed voices and making everyone else feel uncomfortable for either eavesdropping (which I do naturally and very well) or ignoring them.

Finally, almost two hours late, one of my cousins arrived. (The oldest son of the cryer.) And he brought his four month old daughter and her mother with him. I phrase it that way because the mother and my cousin are not married, or engaged. I'm not actually sure that they are still dating. If they are, I don't think they want to be. In any case, my aunt starts shooting dirty looks to anyone in the family that shows any attention to the baby's mother (let's call her Pam) and when my cousin asks if aunt Shelley* wants to hold the baby, she replies "damn right I do". So, he starts to hand her over, and Shelley pushes the baby away and mutters "she's crying. I know what a crying baby looks like". Apparently, after you raise 5 kids you are no longer able to hold a baby that's crying. I thought it might make you more comfortable, but what do I know?

Pause...to be finished tomorrow...

Okay...one month later...I've held you at bay so long you probably don't want to hear the rest of the story anymore, so I will make it short and sweet...

So, Pam, who has obviously been feeling her baby's daddy's mama's tenseness for several months now, jumps out of her chair (remember, she has just met my entire extended family) and grabs my cousin's arm, saying "Let's Go...I don't have to take this..."

Well, the next thing any of us know, Aunt Shelley and Pam are having an extremely cold, extremely uncomfortable argument in the foyer with my cousin standing in between them trying to man up, saying, "let's go out side right now and talk about this, leave the children here..." (By children, I mean Pam's two older kids, by different fathers, and apparently she's still married to the oldest one's dad...) And then Aunt Shelley crosses the line. She leans down and grabs Pam's arm while she's trying to fasten the baby into her carseat and says in her best self-righteous born-again Christian sneer "look here, missy, I've got something to say to you..." and out of nowhere, my Uncle Ray, the most Gentle of all of the Johnson men (and the least likely to use physical force in any situation, mostly because he's the only sober one) comes from nowhere across the living room and grabs Aunt Shelley's arms and pins them behind her, trying to force her through the front door. (It has been determined since that it was because he wanted the whole mess to be taken outside instead of his family embarrasing themselves at his big brother's house.) Well, when my cousin sees his dad hurting his mom, he jumps on his back like a crazed animal, and all four of the adults, two kids, carseat, and diaper bag are suddenly trying to hurdle through my parents' front door AT THE SAME TIME. You can only imagine what this did to the decorations...

In any case, spare the major details, this all spilled into the front yard with my mom saying "not in my house" and my aunt trying to jump in the middle, and my drunk cousin trying to break up the fight (or maybe trying to get into it himself, who really knows) and the rest of us standing at the front door watching in disbelief as son fought father and trashy ho girlfriend sat in the car staring straight ahead like this was EXACTLY how she had pictured Christmas with her boyfriend's family going down. It took close to an hour to get back to normal, and most of that was spent with all of us cooped up inside wanting to talk about it but knowing it wasn't appropriate while my mom and aunt tried to play go between with the two couples to get them to forgive each other and come back in to celebrate (NOT Happening, Duh).

And then we opened presents...

So, we got good and redneckity down in North Kack after all, ya'll.