Love Is A Battlefield

This past weekend, our nephew got married, and like most weddings, family members gathered together to celebrate...and aggravate.

The first skirmish occurred during the rehearsal dinner when a relative of the bride came up to our happy little family group as we were sitting down to dinner.  Trying to make conversation, but inadvertently making enemies with every syllable he uttered, he asked one of Tim's sisters where she fit in the order of the siblings.

"I'm the oldest of the girls," she told him.

"Ahh, but you look like the youngest," he replied gallantly, but unfortunately within hearing of Rose who was across the table.

"Helloooo.  I'm sitting right here," Rose all but growled under her breath while the rest of us snickered.

Oblivious to the daggers Rose was shooting him with her eyes, he continued to dig himself deeper into the hole.

"So how old are your brothers?" he pressed.

"Tim and Tom are celebrating a milestone birthday this year,"  And she named a number I refuse to write because if I see a number that large associated with me in print, I may pass out.

"Really?!!?"  he had the nerve and misfortune to look surprised.  "That's all?  I am ten years older and I thought they were my age.  They are the youngest?"

Uh oh.  Tim's eyes narrowed, while Rose's crossed with the effort it took not to leap across the table and show him who was old.  We all sucked in a collective breath and tried to unobtrusively back away to avoid getting caught in the crossfire.

I don't know what he had done with the money his mother had given him for charm lessons, but I hoped he had invested wisely.  He was going to need a lot of cash to pay the medical bills.

"I don't even dye my hair," he boasted, smoothing back the thinning strands.

"That's what we all say,"  Rose countered with a saccharine sweet smile, fluffing her own blond locks, while Tim sniped, "Yeah.  And the sky is green and the grass is blue," out of the corner of his mouth to me, while I kicked him under the table, hard.

Still not feeling the waves of hostility surging toward him, he continued, "I am the best looking.  See," he pointed across the room, "my one brother is grey and the other is bald."

"Maybe you're adopted," Rose offered, batting her eyelashes at him while preparing to go in for the kill.

Meanwhile, I kicked Tim harder to prevent him from entering the fray.  He subsided with a glare and a muttered, "Mirror, mirror, on the wall..."

"No.  Really.  I, too am the oldest and the best looking," he beamed at Tim's oldest sister, who, knowing he was a dead man walking leaned back while Rose finished him off.

"Well, we can't all be George Clooney," she declared.  As he opened his mouth again, she cut him off.  "One more word and it's off with your head, undyed hair and all."

The foolish man actually laughed, but finally had the good sense to retreat before he was carried, bleeding off the field.

Of course, this exchange was mild compared to the one that took place the day of our rehearsal dinner, oh so many years ago.

It had been a crazy day, filled with a thousand last minute details that needed to be taken care of, but finally it was time to get dressed for dinner.

Since it was ninety-five degrees out, and we were expecting my cousin and her fiance from out of town at any minute, my mother had turned on all three of the air conditioners in the bedrooms.  The only problem was that in our hundred plus year old house, the electrical system could only handle two and a half air conditioners when all the planets lined up and the moon was in the seventh house.

We turned on a light, we blew a fuse.  Plugged in a curling iron, we blew a fuse.  Opened the fridge, we blew a fuse.  Lit a match, we blew a fuse.

And each time this happened, my father would stomp down to the cellar to do battle with the fuse box, cursing a blue streak.  As for the rest of us, this was not our fight, since A. my father was the only one who knew how to do this, and B.  he was the only one brave enough to actually go down there without a silver bullet, string of garlic, bucket of holy water, ghostbuster, exorcist, or team of green berets.

Our cellar made the Amityville Horror house look like a suite at the Ritz.  Even Stephen King could not imagine such a creepy place.

Somewhere around trip number 56 million, my father succumbed to battle fatigue, and lost it.  He charged back up the stairs from the cellar as though something was hot on his heels (which it may have been...an alligator, swamp creature, zombie, Rodent of Unusual Size), made it as far as the foyer and hollered up the stairs to my mother, "Turn off that (unprintable word) air conditioner in the guest room.  I'm not replacing another (string of unprintable words) fuse."

"I'm trying to keep the room cool for Walter (my cousin's fiance).  He won't want to change in a hot room."  My mother was a veteran of many such campaigns, and this did not phase her in the least.

At the end of his rope (which on a really good day is about three inches long), my father exploded like a bomb, "I don't give a s@#t what Walter wants!"

No sooner did the last word leave his mouth than we heard a knock at the screen door behind him, and there was Walter.  A direct hit!

Without missing a beat, my father turned, stuck out his hand, and said, "Oh.  Hello Walter," and then walked away.