Worse, she'd put me through the third degree after babysitting a little cousin in a distant suburb. All she needed to do was raise her eyebrows when I'd come home from a sleepover at my own cousin's house. Mom slammed the door in his face, and didn't speak to anyone in the family for weeks.īut Mom didn't need to divulge details of that night in her cousin's bed to drive her "uncles are not to be trusted" message into my brain. My own uncle-Mom's little brother-had just knocked on our front door, imploring her to attend. Mom never forgave her for that, she told me the day after her uncle died, explaining why she'd refused to go to the funeral. Her mother-my grandmother-sent her back to sleep over at the cousin's house many more times. Mom did tell us that she ratted him out to her own mother, who slapped her and told her not to repeat the story. Mom never told us what happened under the sheets, or if he tried anything the next time she slept over. Her cousin woke up, locked eyes with her father, and told him-in a way that made it seem like she'd been through this before-to knock it off. A few hours later, she awoke to find her uncle staring at her, crouched beside the bed, his hand beneath the sheets. The story-as I've pieced it together-is this: Mom crawled into her cousin's bed and fell asleep. She would allude to what happened to her, back when she was a kid, back when she'd slept over at her cousin's house. Mom always brought it up just as I was about to leave for a sleepover. I looked at my mother and father, sitting on the couch, which had been stripped of the bed sheet but still smelled strongly of Uncle Chuck, and said, "Is pretending to go to bed so Chuck will leave one of our Thanksgiving traditions?" Every year after that, my father would just tell Chuck when he thought it was time he'd best be heading out. The last time this happened, I was 10, and, as Chuck had just left, we were watching the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving Special, and someone, I think it was Linus, said something about Thanksgiving being about traditions. It seemed to work, and though we never, ever discussed the plan again, we kept it up annually. or so, reflecting on the gaffes Chuck committed this year.
#A STORY ABOUT MY UNCLE RULE 34 TV#
Then we all padded back into the living room, turned the lights back on, and watched TV until 11:00 p.m. After my father had turned out the lights, Chuck felt awkward enough that he left. sharp, we all retired to our bedrooms and put on pajamas, pretending that it was our bedtime. I remember my mother explaining the new plan to me, on a bright Thanksgiving morning when I was 5, and I remember Operation: Get Rid of Chuck kicking into action: at 8:00 p.m. The football games would go on and on, and there Chuck would sit, beer in hand, irritating everyone, refusing to leave.
He would drink beer after beer, trying to egg my father on in matters of politics and religion. Thanksgiving always seemed like the biggest holiday for Uncle Chuck: He would sit on our couch, which my mother would cover with a clean bed sheet before he arrived in order to save the furniture from his ripe and, at times, fungal smell.
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