Oh family holidays. Love them or hate them - they happen every year at the same time. Family doesn't change, and in my case - neither did the food or the questions.
Don't get me wrong, I did always enjoy making the 6 hour trip up the Cities to visit family for the holidays. The main reason was because of my cousin. After the questioning about boyfriends we did or did not have - or were or were not happy with - we at least could escape together and digress from the Spanish Inquisition.
See, the problem of being a 'tweener' cousin is that I was too young to hang out with the 4 cousins outside of my age group, and way too old to be caught dead with the youngsters. This is where Jess and Ang enters the equation. You could also refer to our immediate connection as "cousin sanity." Basically outside of our own siblings, of whom we saw enough of already, we had no one but each other to chill with. This means we went through the awkward aunt sex talk when we were 15 and knew full well all about the damn flowers and the bees, talked everyone's ear off about how school was, how lame being in the band was together... you get the drift. Clearly, it wasn't time for the others to have these conversations. We were the next in line. And it sure felt like every holiday it was the same record. (This was good actually - little prep was necessary). :)
This 'tweener' classification led to unfortunate circumstances at holidays. There was enough room at the adult table for holidays for us to sit. Having more than 20 aunts and uncles, not to mention the 35 some cousins we have - made that graduation nearly impossible. Instead - it was the kids table for us. This meant watching cousins eat way too much marshmallow jello, blowing soda pop out of their noses and my personal favorite - starting the table on fire with the candles.
We just wanted to sit at the goddamn adult table. They clearly were having way more fun (we later discovered allchie helps!) and were talking about more important things than the Teenage Mutant Turtles and their boogers. If not with the adults - then come on - how about the actual teenager table? Even if they scared us with their wisdom, or so we thought... we were mature and hip at 12 too. Come on!
The other main problem of being a tweener was having to WAIT in the congo line for food. Yes, it was always buffet style. So after all the little urchins touched everything, licked everything and cleaned the place out. Well, not really - but it felt that way. At least there were always the staples - green bean casserole, marshmallow veggie jello, olives, buns. Sometimes I feel like that is all we ever ate. It was amazing how fast the sides and meat would fly away from the buffet line. Don't even get me started on the dessert. (Okay - fine. I remember one year for Thanksgiving for the 50+ people eating there were 4 pies. 4 fricking pies! They were not even homemade. *s*. We opted for spiking our koolaid that year. I think that was a fine option).
For having so many cousins and aunts/uncles- the house was always crowded. In fact, once you entered the line for the buffet (of which could take 15 minutes to move) there was no turning back. Get your plate and then scoot. Once you either sat in the many card tables arranged around the first floor, the kitchen "kids" table, or the frosty porch there was no moving. Forgot butter - tough shit. It was impossible to move around in that house when it was feeding time at the zoo - impossible. Seconds, what were seconds? Naturally jello and marshmallow mush. Other than that - good luck.
Not that this post makes much sense - and if anything it is only bringing to mind even more crazy memories. Nonetheless, holidays were always a good time. Thank the stars above that I did not have to face them alone.
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