Families .............

People fall-in-love, get married and have kids. Well, each family has its own initiation, right? My families are downright scary, you might think that yours is bad, wait till you hear about ours. I was having a conversation with my cousin the other day and we had been talking about my other cousin. (I have a lot of cousins). She’s gonna have a baby soon, a boy. At that topic, it reminded me when my family first met her husband, Matt. Before I launch into my story, please note that I took no part in this, I was only a spectator. Someone in my family decided that we should all play some games, me being me was smart enough to not play. Matt, however, did not follow my example, I did try to warn him, but did he listen? Nope. He played dangerous games. It was like Hunger Games all over again, except Matt was Peta and my family was the careers. It was brutal, to say the least. Now you all probably think that he just beat him at the game. Well, it was more than that, let me explain. I don’t even know what the game was called all I know was a guessing numbers game. The people playing had a fist on their forehead the other people had to guess the right number, otherwise the person who guessed wrong would get hit a lot. Let's just say that Matt isn’t good at guessing random numbers. He was pounded, it wasn’t exactly the prettiest scene to watch. Now after that one experience none of the rest family wants to bring someone home. When my cousin got picked up for a dance, he tried to shield his date. He was not successful, the family still was able to see her. Good thing, no one actually wanted to harm her. She was lucky. Anyways I was having this conversation earlier with the same cousin that the to the dance. I and he had a really interesting conversation about this. I’ll tell you that my mom can NOT keep a secret for the life of her. So if and when I bring someone home, I will try to not tell my mom. We discussed the importance of keeping it a secret because if the family knew someone new was coming, it would be a disaster. I would tell my dad and my cousin because they are somewhat trustworthy. Tell my mom it was a special occasion, not really telling her why. So it would still be a nice dinner, then one of my many uncles or aunts would happen upon the secret and spread the word. No matter how many of these different solutions we came up with it would always fail. You know how the villain always loses? That's how I felt discussing this terrifying topic with my cousin. I felt like the villain cause I will never win the battle with my mother! Either my cousin would betray me, or a relative would find out or my dad would let it slip. It always ends up with my mother winning. No matter what I think of it will not work, I hate our family initiation. By the end of that conversation though, we were laughing so hard that I had begun crying.


j.h.