Since July 4th weekend is all about fireworks, it seems like a perfect time for the Gay Uncle to relate the last–and most personally explosive–of his vacation anecdotes. It concerns a certain adult male family member losing his cool, and it is not Gunc’s Brother-in-Law Marty this time. He’s speaking of himself! Here’s the setting: G.U. is “enjoying” the last day of a week-long family trip, he’s seated in the back seat of a nauseatingly jauncy Jeep on twisty third-world roads en route to the far side of the island, hungover from the previous nights festivities (read: two games of go-fish with his cheating nieces), stomach-growlingly hungry. Since there is not enough room in the rental cars for all family members (?!?) he has a niece on his lap, as does his boyfriend Tal, and said girls have been bickering since before the engine started. During the ride, the Gay Uncles did their best to quell the conflict by engaging the beasties in a game Tal invented called “Recipe” in which someone mentions a food (a grapefruit, saltines, beef jerky) and then each player in turn gets to do something to the ingredient (put it in a blender, add pig blood, freeze it into a slushy, slice it razor thin and layer it on your face). The game went pretty well, save the fact that the nieces kept trying to kill one another with their recipes (“Then Violet eats it all and dies.”) and eventually had to be called on this account. By the time their car finally arrived at the beach, and G.U. and his lapmate piled out, the tension was thick, so when his partner started screaming for Tal’s partner to pass her her pink flip-flops from the floor well, G.U. decided to intervene. “Violet, can you please give me Brooke’s shoes.” Amped up, Violet grinned and grabbed the sandals, and before he knew what had happened, she flung one of them out of the car. This wasn’t at all what her tired and patient uncle had asked her to do, but worse than this, the shoe hit him right between the eyes, denting his (intentionally cheap) sunglasses. Last straw, meet camel’s back. Gunc’s nostrils flared, his pulse quickened, and he asked the question one should never ask a misbehaving child. “WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?” he hollered. “I asked you to hand me the shoes, not throw them at my face.” His niece shrugged, unconcerned. “Sorry…?” she said, with utter insincerity. “Fake apology not accepted,” Gunc replied, turning away. “Now pick up your cousin’s shoes and hand them to her like I asked you to.” The Gay Uncle felt bad for losing his cool–and particularly for the idiotic rhetorical question, something he abhors–but his niece remained calm through their picnic lunch, and played with her cousins independently and without incident for the remainder of the afternoon. He is planning on going into full Nazi mode at the very start of the next family trip.
Leaping Lizards
Those of you who know the Gay Uncle personally know that while he loves children, he has a much lower tolerance for other forms of cute and cuddly life, namely: animals. Much of this is due to allergies (cats, dogs, rodents) but some of it is historically based: he never had a pet as a child and thus failed to learn the appeal. (He also hates cleaning up the poo of other living creatures.) Anyway, he tells you this so you’ll understand why he’s chosen to include as his second post-vacation post this week, another Caribbean creature feature. (This, and the fact that he never tires of the charismatic buffoonery of his brother-in-law, Marty.) This story involves a lizard. Like donkeys and mongeese, lizards patrol the lush terrain of the island of St. John as if they own the place, sunning themselves in drainage ditches, scampering underfoot, and sometimes stopping traffic by drawing a cluster of camera-wielding tourists. Don’t get the wrong impression here. When G.U. says lizard, he’s not talking about cute little geckos or green anoles. He’s referring to these terrifying creatures which are about three feet long, covered in scales and spikes, and clearly just a teensy evolutionary micro-blip away from the T. Rex. Given this information, Gunc will tell his tale in the form of a question: How would you behave if you were a 200 pound, 43 year-old man, managing the care of three young girls, and one of these hissing monsters approached your beach chairs, its beady eyes trained on your lunch? You have five choices.
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a) Stomp the ground, wave your arms, and shout “Shoo evil raptor! You will not devour my daughters and niece this afternoon!”
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b) Gather said children in your arms and retreat into the relative safety of the water until such point as the danger passes on to another, more vulnerable, beach-going family.
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c) Call “resort” security
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d) Stab the reptile through the heart with a sharpened stick, build a fire, and make dinner for the entire island.
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e) Abandon the children where they sit, lure the animal towards the waterline by holding a small piece of your sandwich perilously close to its razor-like teeth, drop the bread on the wet sand as bait, and begin pelting the predator with pebbles and chunks of coral. When confronted by an environmentally conscious 11 year-old Australian boy about your concerted efforts to harm a protected species of lizard, respond with the caveat that you were simply “Trying to train this iguana to fear humans!”
If you selected e) you may have something in common with Gunc’s B-I-L, Marty, (as well as lion tamers, Homer Simpson, and the Defense Department analysts responsible for planning the post-invasion management of the city of Baghdad): a very specific–and little understood–form of “intelligence”. If this is the case (or if you know someone like this) please help science to understand their synaptical mysteries, by sharing your story in COMMENTS below.