I love the holidays. The Christmas trees, the tinsel, the drunken drivers with no respect for the property and lives of others.

It’s a time of families getting together, trading stories, swapping seedy gossip about members who weren’t wise enough to show up and watch their backs, and performing various acts of simple assault that are quickly forgotten because, hey, it’s family.

Like me and my cousin playing horse shoes. Sure he made a rude joke. And sure I rammed his nose with my shoulder. But we didn’t need blue lights and badges – not when grandmama’s around to sit us in a corner.

Awwww, grandmama, I’m 36. I don’t wanna sit in the corner. I don’t wanna, I say, I don’t wanna.

It’s family.

And when I tried to give my little sister, now well into her 30s, a head noogie, and she pierced my forearm with her fingernails, digging them in for a full five minutes, just like she did when she was 7, nobody called the police.

My other sister did tell everyone in the house to be quiet, including my new bride, and, “Y’all, listen to Gene scream like a little girl.” But it was all in good fun, despite the throbbing pain and humiliation of being emasculated in front of my wife.

It’s family.

And when I was carrying one niece on my head, with two others attached to my legs, and I stumbled and stepped on a little 3-year-old, no one called the doctor despite her banshee-like screams that were loud enough to go beyond the walls and penetrate the offices of the local Department of Social Services.

You can’t be hurt if it’s family.

I’ve got a new family now. And the holidays afforded my new in-laws the opportunity to learn a little more about me, such as my lifelong hatred of my sworn enemy, carpet.

The loathing of carpet has been around for as long as people have had it. As evidence, I quote these lines from Shakespeare:

Gene: I will spill my beverage on the carpet; which is a disgrace to carpet, if it bear it.

Carpet: Do you spill a beverage on us, sir?

Gene: I do spill my beverage on you, carpet.

Really, my in-laws are nice people and they can’t yet refuse me a beverage, as my own family does. So they give me a glass of frosty beverage and then it’s there, spreading out over the carpet to make a nice stain.

Thank you for the iced tea, ma’am. Whoops, ma’am. I’m so sorry, ma’am. Do you have a towel, ma’am? No, no, I can get it. Whoops, was that your tea? I’m sorry, I didn’t see it there. I think we’re going to need another towel. Whoops.

A couple more times, however, and they’re going to have me drinking out of a sippy cup.

But it doesn’t matter now. They’re family.

City Editor Gene Crider can be reached at gcrider@timesanddemocrat.com and 803-533-5570. To comment on this and other stories, visit TheTandD.com.

You must be logged in to comment.