I KNOW YOU!

I really loved my 50 book challenge last year. This year, I've decided to do 50 Blog Posts! Wish me luck. So far during those last three sentences, I've cleaned my keyboard, texted dinner plans, and bothered Shaughn in the kitchen. I keep thinking of what I read on Allie Brosh's Hyperbole and a Half Faqs. She says that blog posts take longer because she has to work harder on material. When she was younger she had a bunch of material that was so good that it didn't take much effort. But now she has to tease out fuller stories out of ideas. And that's basically how I feel about my stories.

I think writing blog posts used to feel like sitting around the table telling stories with my family and friends. Which is best time to write stories. We lived just down the road from my grandparents growing up and my aunts and uncles weren't too far away. And we had huge meals together and lingered at the table visiting. Do people still call coming over to chat visiting? You can visit someone but it's only when you are chatting with a glass of iced tea tinkling with ice cubes, that you are visiting. Anyway, we lived  a quarter of a mile from my grandparents and I knew their house almost as well as I knew my own. Going up to their house, it had these cement steps that had sloped sides that we were always running up or down. Next to the steps was this little plump hill that curved like a juicy peach. My cousins, Ranessa and Danae,and I had a lot of fun on this little hill. We would roll down it, do cartwheels down it, and race each other up and down.

My grandparents had lots of friends that came to visit. One of Grandpa's fishing buddies especially liked to come visit around dinner and supper time, which drove my Grandma crazy. His name was Sonny Galeson and he was quite the character. He was loud and had a stutter. We still laugh at his joke,
How do you sell a chicken to deaf man?

You say, YOU WANT TO BUY A CH-CH-CH-CHICKEN!!

He also swore and told dirty jokes to the boys when they worked the cattle but I didn't know much about that. 

In a big family your name is often hard to place--even to your own family (Nate-Missie-Jennifer-Wait, I meant MISSIE!) But it can be almost impossible for outsiders. Not only do they have a hard time placing your name, they are always introducing themselves with the assumption you probably don't know them. So it was, I walked into my grandparents kitchen with my cousin Ranessa. Sonny, my grandparents and other family members were visiting with each other when I loudly announced, "I KNOW YOU! YOU'RE SONNY GALESON!" Everyone laughed, including Sonny, whose eyes got big and he jumped out of chair and began chasing me and Ranessa. We raced outside, which is usually as far as most adults will pretend to chase you. But not Sonny. He came barreling out of the house like a gorilla. We ran down the little hill we knew so well and jumped into the first vehicle we came to and locked the doors. Sonny, unfamiliar with the hill started out ok, but his stride didn't understand the roundedness of the hill and lost his balance and fell hard and rolled down the rest of the hill. His shirt pulled up as he rolled and we saw his giant white belly as round as the moon. He got up and walked back to the house, ignoring Ranessa and I still screaming in a pickup, and tucking his shirt in over his plumbers crack. It was horrifying to have witnessed so much nudity at my grandparents. Not to mention the terrifying worry of what he was planning to do with us if he caught us. We sat in the pickup for some time calming down and laughing. 

Sonny would alternately entertain and terrorize me. One day he knocked down my block castle on purpose and I cried and told his wife and Grandma on him. They chastised him and he kind of helped me put it back together. A couple weeks later, he showed up at my house. He told me he had something for me. He said he had gone to Chicago and saw Mr. T, who had the most beautiful necklace on. He asked him if he could have it because he had a very special little girl he needed to apologize to and the necklace would be just the way to do it. Mr. T. refused and said they only way he could get the necklace was to fight him. Sonny pantomimed having to fight Mr. T which had us all rolling. Then he pulled out a gold medallion on a gold chain, the kind you might win at the fair, and handed it to me. "Here you g-g-go. Sorry about your c-c-c-astle." I hugged him and ran off to make up dance routines in my basement but I wore the medallion for weeks.