In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Cousin It.”

Families are all weird for sure and I know this one guy who’s family is way weirder than mine and he is my brother-in-law so now he’s my family, too. He is an outlandish motherfucker who used to drive tanks in Afghanistan and also climbed ladders straight up four or twenty stories high and used to race family cars against cops and burners on the highways and never get caught and he had a V6 Camaro and took the muffler off to prove it.

He can’t be in the room with a conversation unless he rocks himself back and forth into a vegetative state or unless he’s controlling the conversation, it just depends on if there are stronger personalities as to which of those he’ll choose. If there’s no one to shut him down he’ll talk and talk about how he doesn’t want to interrupt you and wants you to talk to everyone else and you shouldn’t talk to him because he knows you have a better life than him and you should enjoy it. Then he’ll get a phone call and I’ll start talking to my sister like I came there to do and then he’ll wave us down and put the phone on speaker and say, “I want you guys to hear this! Listen!” and I’m only there for an hour or so to talk to my sister I haven’t seen in a long time and that’s how the whole thing goes and he’ll say, “Well I’m really glad you two got to catch up she really enjoys talking to you.”

He’s managed to take over the whole family, actually. When he’s not there we talk about how crazy he is and what he did this time and when he is there he talks about how crazy he is and what he did this time and a hundred other times and how no one understands the right way to do anything and that time he went to the city and honked at mother fuckers while drinking out of a warm two liter gas station brand soda he found under the seat the other day.

He came in here the other day and told a story loud enough for the whole building to hear and one part of it was him yelling three times, “I do NOT love you!” Ha! Crazy ass.