My Diseased Mind

Reunion

It’s just not a family reunion without a beating, stabbing, slashed tires, and an (alleged) molestation.

Nope, there’s not an untrue statement in the above sentence. A couple of weeks ago, I attended a family reunion at Lake LBJ. It ran from Thursday to Sunday, but Manda and I didn’t show up until Friday. By then, three of the four offenses had already been committed.

On Thursday night, a couple of my younger cousins, we’ll call them Harry and Lloyd, decided to get their drank on. Despite it being well known that Harry doesn’t handle hard liquor all that well, Lloyd decided to shame him into drinking whiskey. He was successful in that endeavor, but the end result was Harry poking him in the side with a hunting knife. Ah, youth. It’s wasted on the dumb.

Lloyd didn’t take this lying down, or even thrashing around wildly with a superficial stab wound. He (and his three friends) proceeded to lay a beatdown on poor Harry. Duly chastened, Harry departed, but not before he slashed all four of Lloyd’s tires with the aforementioned hunting knife. And thus ends day 1 of the family reunion.

On Friday, Manda and I made our appearance. All was quiet, and past offenses were forgiven. The kids were in the pool, with the older kids, Lloyd among them, throwing them around. In general, things were good, albeit a little quiet. I made plans for the evening, which included sitting on the bank of the lake and drinking large quantities of whiskey. I don’t stab people when I drink, so where’s the harm?

That night, a drunk guy approached our party. He was pretty upset, and claimed that another cousin, Lloyd’s brother, had touched the man’s son inappropriately. Nobody took him all that seriously, including his friend, who told us that he gets this way when he’s drinking. I honestly had no idea that booze made non-relatives crazy. He left without incident, and that was the end of that. Until the cops showed up.

At first, I thought we were in for a treat. The tall, bald cop was accompanied by a young, good-looking, female cop. My first thought, “Is it someone’s birthday?” turned out to be incorrect: the drunk guy had called the law. After a few minutes of questions the cops left, completely disgusted with Lloyd, and satisfied that one drunk was flinging wild accusations at another. We don’t think Lloyd’s brother did anything inappropriate. In the words of my aunt, “He’s too cute to do that stuff. He doesn’t have to do it.” I took this to mean that he can have any underage boy he wants, but maybe I misunderstood.

In keeping with standard operating procedure, I killed the bottle of whiskey, watched the sun come up, and went to bed, prepared to start the process all over again a few hours later. After a few hours of sleep, I decided against it. Yeah, I caught a lot of shit over being ‘too old’ to throw down anymore, but truth is, I just didn’t have any bail money with me, and I was pretty certain we were progressing to body-in-the-lake territory.

I cannot wait until next year.

Tags: molestation, reunion, stabbing