Open bar, dude!

When I was little getting together with my cousin from Indiana was the most tolerable family reunions. My sister was the oldest, my cousin a year younger and I was two years behind him. We got along well.

We would listen to Great White on a tape recorder in my grandpa’s basement as we tried to make stink bombs with our chemistry sets. We also set up plays to lure my uncle from Idaho into the basement so we could tie him up. My cousin wasn’t much a boy scout though, because our uncle would always free himself as we were plundering his suitcase and we would pay for our treachery through wet willies until our uncle flew back to Idaho.

We always had to sit together at the “kids table” during these visits but it wasn’t bad because we would throw things, lament on the terrible food and hollow out dinner rolls to clean our plates.

A decade later, it’s nice to know some things never change.

At my step-cousin’s wedding last weekend my sister and her husband, cousin and his wife, and G. Jonah and I got sat at the kid’s table with two sixth-graders.

We listened to their sixth-grade woes and gave advice: “You broke up with your girlfriend because she punched you in the spine and now she wants to get back together? Tell her talk to the fist cause the face is pissed,” or “Your best friend likes the boy you used to like? Stab her.”

Then we stole a bottle of Champaign from an empty table, talked about things our parents will never know (can we say a trip to Texas five years ago?), and decided to take advantage of the open bar by seeing how many liquor glasses we could collect on our table.

I must say that kind of stability is comforting.