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Tag Archives: relatives

14. A photo of one of your relatives. 10/8/79. Gerald and mom playing Clue.

It says “one of your relatives” but here are two of them. This is cousin Gerry playing Clue with my mom. What you don’t know about my mom is that she was the Clue champion. Nobody could beat her. This photo is amazing because it absolutely captures how Mom played the game. She was relentless. She looks like she’s actually interrogating Gerry. “We have your buddy Professor Plum in the other room, and he left you high and dry! He told us all about how you did it with the rope in the Ballroom. ”

14. A photo of one of your relatives. Undated. (Grandaddy) Paul & (Uncle) Paul.

And looking through all these photos, I found this one as well. I think it’s an absolute fantastic father & son moment. I suppose part of this photo-a-day thing is picking the one photo you want to represent each of the days, but hell, I just love the stories each of these pictures tells….

Word count: 28,044.

Here’s an excerpt. Paul & Arthur are still at the faux-Irish bar (Paddy O’Irish). Arthur’s favorite Cola employees (Cheryl, Tammy, Kelly) are there as well. Charming as ever, Arthur has once again raised their ire…. This whole bar scene was written just so that I could have Arthur say the very last line. This is how far I’ll go for a joke.

Kelly was out of her chair faster than I thought was humanly possible. Her hands flew towards my throat. I instinctively jumped back, but she was a woman on a mission. She was just about to wrap her hands around my neck when, fortunately for me, Paul stepped in between us. He managed to separate Kelly from me and make her take a few steps back.

“Come on, Kelly,” he said, using the voice I recognized as the one he used to defuse potential explosive situations at home. “You know he was just messing about.”

Kelly was still seeing red and was not hearing a word Paul said. “That fucking asshole.”

Paul persisted. “Kelly. It’s Arthur. He does this. He can’t help it.”

“It’s true!” I offered. “I can’t!”

Paul waved me off. “Go sit down,” he ordered. But his parental voice didn’t work on me. I wanted to watch.

Kelly did seem calmer. Her voice was so quiet that I could barely hear her when she said, “I’m going to kill him.”

She sounded serious. I almost believed that she had it in her.

“Kelly, he’s not worth it,” Paul said. “Come on.”

Somehow, that had the desired effect. Kelly cast one more glare in my direction and then returned to her chair. It wasn’t until everyone started talking again that I realized that the crowd at the bar had gone silent as soon as Kelly had erupted. Now the world around us resumed. Paul put a firm hand on my shoulder and lead us back to our stools.

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were trying to get fired. Or killed,” he said.

“Did you mean it?” I asked.

“Mean what?”

“When you said that I wasn’t worth it. You don’t think I’m not worth it, do you?”