The Beautiful Kind

1. Genealogy books

2. Soapstone sculptures

3. Glass paperweights

4. Hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil, see-no-evil monkey figurines

5. Camels

6. Mammy and Uncle Tom memorabilia

7. Old medical instruments

8. Door knobs

9. Telephone pole insulators

10. Skulls

11. Banks

12. Martini glasses (preferably stolen from restaurants)

My parent’s house is a mess.

My mom’s fashion sense is unreal. Her latest t-shirt proclaims: “UNDERMEDICATED”

A typical outfit: a black shirt with one sleeve ripped off, with bleach stains and a “Harley Davidson” patch sewed on, black fingernail polish, aqua shorts, shiny lavender lycra hose, one pink sock and one purple sock, and white tennis shoes colored red with a marker.

Other clothes: orange hunting vest, a brass buckle shaped to look like a hand coming out of the top of her pants, big black Harley Davidson pants with blue flames shooting up the legs, sparkly hot pink tops, lots of spandex, black leather jacket with patches of the band Queen sewn on the back, etc.

She’s had some strange preoccupations. When she gets into something, she gets obsessed. She was really into Queen for a while, and had a whole wall in her bedroom covered with pictures of Freddy Mercury. When she got into the Blues Brothers, not only did she watch the movie once or twice a day for weeks on end, but she dyed both her sons hair brown and dressed them up as Jake and Elwood. She has an entire bookshelf dedicated to true crime books, and had a pen pal in prison for a while.

Her behavior is as unconventional as her sense of style. One time, when we were visiting an animal shelter, she was told she couldn’t adopt a kitten because it was sick. That didn’t stop her. When no one was around, she simply opened the cage, slipped the kitten in her purse, and walked calmly out of the place. (The shoplifted kitten died the next day of distemper.) Another time in the mall, she saw a 13-year-old girl being arrested for shoplifting. Without hesitating, she ran up and claimed she was the girl’s mother, and got the astonished girl off the hook.

My mom got married at age 19 in 1966. Right about the time she got married was the time she started breaking down.

She was a nurse before I was born. She worked on a pediatrics ward, and back then there was no regulating, so when you gave a kid a pain pill, you just broke it in half and threw the other half away. I’m not sure how her habit started, but at first she started popping the half she was supposed to discard. Then, she began taking the whole pain pill, instead of giving it to the children.

She was finally caught shooting up in the bathroom by her head nurse and was arrested. I have a copy of her mug shot; she’s still wearing her uniform. That was the end of her nursing career.

Why is it that every time I visit family, I end up getting things I don’t want? Such as pictures of babies I’m somewhat related to. I don’t really like babies. Tonight I went over to my parents house, and now there’s a sombrero in my car. Next time I make a clothing donation at one of those drop boxes, I’m going to shove the sombrero in there, and the clothing sorters will resent me.

I also receive unwanted bags of lettuce, boxes of donuts, and soda cans. The lettuce is because I’m vegetarian and they think it’s a good match, the donuts are because they only wanted to eat two of the donuts and now they need to get the rest out of the house pronto - sure, I’ll put those on my hips instead of yours, anything I can do to help. The soda cans are my doing - I obsessively dig through my families trash cans, trying to recycle for six people. SIX PEOPLE THAT DRINK A CASE OF SODA A DAY AND DON’T CARE.

Last week I was given a picture of my dead grandmother in her coffin - what am I supposed to do with it? Display it on my desk at work? I have to say, she has the loveliest complexion I’ve ever seen on a corpse, all peaches and cream. It goes well with her coral lipstick and melon suit. If the timing was right, I could have put the sombrero in her coffin, explaining to nearby mourners that she always wanted to go to Mexico.