my family is crazy. period. i love them, but we are far from normal. a perfect example would be dinner last night. really an assortment of things occurred, but here are some of my favorites:
pee wee herman: during a somewhat serious conversation about the police academy, my mother suddenly interjects. "Oh my God guys! you know who I miss?! What's his face! Oh man he was SOOO funny! I loved him!" my brother responds with his usual sarcasm, "Oh yeah what's his face, I miss him too."
"PEE WEE!! PEE WEE HERMAN! That's his name! That's who I miss, man what a funny guy", and then, my mother proceeds to do an impression of the purple chair from the Pee Wee Herman Show, while we are still in the restaurant. Woman with children are starting to give her dirty looks based on my mother's love for pee wee herman and that fact that he is now infamous for being a sexual predator.
The look on my brother's face was PRICELESS. I've never seen anyone look more disgusted or disturbed. Her digression from our original topic was so unprompted and unrelated, I thought he might actually strangle her. To his reaction she replies "what? you said you miss him too!" Sometimes, blatant sarcasm goes over my mum's head. Which is less funny and more irritating when you're required to rewind the story to the beginning to explain what actually happened, during which you lose her attention anyway to anything shiny or moving.
take out box: our waiter brought over take out boxes for the rest of our meals. he had accidentally given us one to many, because my dad wasn't taking anything home. Of course, a normal person would have returned the unused box to the waiter and that would have been the end of it. but, clearly, this was not what happened. My dad takes his left over rib bones, from his baby back ribs, puts them in a box, and places them in the takeout bag. my mum, oblivious to this, reaches into the bag to rearrange the boxes and pulls out that one, noting that it is suspiciously light. Upon opening the rib bones she looks at my dad (who starts giggling to himself, as usual when he does something ridiculous) and yells "you fucking idiot". Of course, the woman sitting behind us with 6 children under the age of 8 is none to happy and gives ME the evil eye because I'm in her direct line of vision. So my mother throws the box of bones into my dads plate, covering it with bbq sauce. At this point my dad is laughing pretty hard. He takes out the bones and when the waiter comes back he hands the bbq covered box to the waiter and says, "oh, this was an extra, we didn't need it".
pinata: again, normal family, would have a) put up a pinata outside, b)used a bat or broom stick, and c) would not have bought one in the first place for their 19 year old son. but again, this is not a normal scenario. My mum thought it would be HILARIOUS to buy him one. So, since for my 22 birthday, I had insisted (after many drinks) to punch mine open at my "Mexican Drug Running" themed party, my brother wanted to out do me and HEADBUTT the pinata. genious. i have to say it was pretty hysterical, but never the less, not a brilliant move. The idea arose only after his girlfriend hit my father in the head with the pinata and broke a hole in it, which was then duct taped over and hung from the ceiling in our kitchen.
the rest of it was opened with a broken wiffle ball bat that shattered pieces of yellow plastic all over the floor along with the candy that my dog was trying to hoard in her mouth before being yanked away from the laffy taffy disaster on the kitchen floor; all of this narrowly missing my beloved 2 year old goldfish. i'm pretty certain months from now we'll still be finding pieces of candy lodge in the ceiling, cabinets and other corners of our house.
