“STOP!  Jesus Christ, please stop,” I plead before taking another big gulp of my wine.  “Carter, can you let everyone know dinner is ready and we’re doing it buffet style.  They can all come in here and fill up their plates before sitting down at the table.  If you need me, I’ll be in here with my head in the oven.”

~

An hour later everyone is still picking at their food after going back for seconds and thirds.  My mom sits next to Sue and the two of them have been whispering and giggling like school girls through the entire meal, stopping every once in a while to glance over at my dad before falling into a fit of hysterics all over again.

“Hey, Claire, does this apple pie have nuts in it?  I don’t like nuts,” Drew states.

“I like nuts.  Nuts are delicious,” Gavin pipes up, taking a big bite of apple pie to prove it.

“Well, I don’t like nuts,” Drew argues.

“Guys, that’s enough nut talk,” Liz complains as she pours herself another glass of wine from the bottle in the middle of the table.

“I’M GOING TO PUT MY NUTS ON ALL OF YOU!” Gavin yells through a mouthful of food.

Carter clamps his hand over Gavin’s mouth and then leans over to quietly tell him it isn’t polite to yell at the table.

“So, Claire’s mom, do you have any good stories to tell us about your little cupcake when she was growing up?  Any slumber parties with naked pillow fights or lesbian experimentation?” Drew asks.

“What’s a lez bean?  Is that like a lima bean?  I don’t like lima beans.  I am NOT going to eat a lez bean,” Gavin declares.

“Oh, you’ll change your mind about that someday,” Drew tells him with a wink.

“Gavin, how about you go pick out a movie, and I’ll put it on in the living room?” Carter suggests.  He obviously doesn’t want our son learning about the fine art of carpet munching just yet.

Gavin lets his fork clamor to his plate, jumps down off of his chair, and takes off running to the DVD shelf in the living room.

“Sorry, Drew, my childhood was pretty uneventful,” I tell him, bringing the conversation back to the original subject.  “No one has anything even remotely interesting to tell,” I inform him as I hold my glass across the table towards Liz so she can give me a refill.

My mom nods in agreement and gives Drew a sad look.

“Unfortunately she’s right.  Claire was a very boring child.  She liked to read and take naps.  We used to invent things to do just to mess with her and try to fuck her up a little bit.  She was entirely too well-rounded.  It was disturbing.  George, remember that time you had your friend Tim call the house when she was eight because she wasn’t listening to you?  Didn’t he pretend he was Santa Clause?”

My dad leans back in his chair and comes an inch away from sticking his hand in the waistband of his pants in post-dinner bliss before he realizes he isn’t alone in his own home.  He quickly switches directions and moves his arm to the back of Sue’s chair.

“Yep, she was being a mouthy little shit so I had Tim call and put the fear of Santa into her,” he says with a chuckle.

“Hey, that wasn’t funny.  He told me I was a very bad little girl and that he’d been watching me.  He said he lived in the basement and came up at night to watch me sleep.  He’s the reason I still take the basement stairs two-at-a-time when I run up them and why I called America’s Most Wanted when I was nine because there was some killer on the loose hiding in people’s basements,” I explain.  “I told them the killer was Santa, that he called me the year before, and that he was probably still in our basement.”

“I remember that afternoon.  The police questioned us for two hours so they could make sure we weren’t harboring a criminal,” my mother states.  “That was such a long, boring day.”

“No, don’t worry about me.  I was totally fine,” I deadpan.

“Oh quit your bitchin’. It wasn’t that bad.  You’re still alive, aren’t you?” my dad asks.  “And don’t lie, Rachel.  They only questioned us for about thirty seconds.  Then you asked them if they wanted a joint and all was forgotten.  Cops were way more fun back then,” he says to the rest of the table.

I turn towards Carter. “Never, ever ask me again why I am the way I am.  NEVER.  AGAIN,” I whisper.

“I did walk in on her playing with her Barbie’s one time, and she had them all undressed, humping each other.  It was some weird sex circle, and Ken was sitting in the middle just watching them, fully dressed.  I wanted to light some incense and set the mood for her, but then I saw she had one of the horses in the circle of sex and it just got disturbing at that point.  I never knew Barbie was into bestiality,” my mother states solemnly.

I lean forward and start banging my head softly on the table.

“Nice!  Getting freaky with the Barbie dolls.  I like it,” Drew exclaims.

“I think in honor of this family dinner, we need to remember the best part about our holiday dinners, Rachel,” my dad tells her with a gleam in his eye.  “Ceiling fan baseball.”

My parents start laughing as they remember dinners of the past, and I just continue to bang my head harder.

This was supposed to be a nice, peaceful dinner.

“Oh my God! I remember ceiling fan baseball from high school!” Liz says excitedly.  “Except didn’t we play it with tater tots a few times?”

“Yes, we’ve been known to make substitutions,” my mother states.

“Okay, what the hell is ceiling fan baseball?  It’s not what I think it is, right?” Drew asks as he looks back and forth between my parents.  They each look at me expectantly.  Liz is practically bouncing up and down in her chair in excitement.

Oh what the hell.

I roll my eyes and drain my glass of wine in one gulp, slamming it back to the table with a thunk.

“Alright, fine.  Carter, grab the wooden cutting board with the handle.  Liz, put all the extra rolls on the stove into a basket.  Jim, turn the ceiling fan on low and Drew, move the table to the side.”

Everyone stares at me with their mouths open for exactly three seconds, and then they all jump into action and start gathering supplies.

“I’ll get more booze!” Jenny announces happily.

“I got the mashed potatoes,” my dad states casually.

“What do we need mashed potatoes for?” Carter asks as he walks back into the room with the cutting board, a.k.a “baseball bat”.

“Claire, this man is hot as balls but he’s kind of dumb,” my mother says as she pats Carter’s cheek affectionately.  “The mashed potatoes are the catcher’s mitt.  Duh.”

11.  Mommy!

I think it’s safe to say that my parents will never understand the whirlwind that is Claire and her family.  I’m okay with that.  It’s not like I’ve ever been that close to them anyway.  Their parenting style had always been a bit more standoffish than most.  I think it’s one of the main reasons I knew I needed to do right by Claire and Gavin.  I never want my son to feel like there is anything even remotely more important to me than him.  Don’t get me wrong. My parents are good people.  They love me and they have done a good job raising me.  They had sent me to the best schools and had high hopes for my future.  When I dropped out of college because it bored the shit out of me, they didn’t take it very well.  They had wanted me to be a doctor or a lawyer and share their country club membership.  They like things calm, neat, orderly, and pretentious.  They most definitely aren’t ceiling fan baseball-playing people, and they never will be.  It had taken them a while to stop trying to fit me into a certain mold and realize they need to just let me make my own choices and live my own life.  They had been really excited to find out they were grandparents and I know they will be good at it.  On the bright side, at least Gavin will have someone in his life who could teach him how to sit on the board of a company, complain about paying taxes, and hide money from the government.  Since he already has people showing him how to swear like a truck driver and throw food at ceiling fans during dinner, I do believe this will make him the most well-rounded human being on the planet.