Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Half of me!

So now that all my immediate family has had a week dedicated to how crazy/special they are. It is time for me to dive into why? After doing research on family and why they act crazy and when I say research I mean watching Everybody Loves Raymond or King of Queens. I have come to realize that every family is crazy. Now, some families are more crazy than others but hopefully they have enough love to offset the craziness. It can be hard at times to have enough love because the crazy comes at you full force but it is the only way to get through it.

So, as most families I have a Mother and a Father and they both have families as well so there are two branches to this fun and crazy family tree. Both of these sides had a key part in the awesomeness which is ME. Today we will climb to the branch of my Fathers side.

Now before we dive into this let me say one thing. I love my Grandma.

So, my Dad's side of the family. He is 100% Mexican/Spanish as I told you last week and people of the Latin decent tend to be very passionate/loud about things. One of those passions is our food. I love the food I get when we go to Grandma's house. Authentic mexican food is pretty awesome. My Grandma is your typical Grandma, and by that I mean she will feed you until you explode. Which, is fine with me.

My Grandma grew up in a strict Pastor's home and brought those morals and rules to her family as well. When I was a kid we knew to respect my grandparents or else you would get smacked with a shoe. My grandparents had the room that no one could go into unless the President of the United States happened to drop by. Although, after many years that rule went away and we could hang out on those plastic covered couches. My uncles is also a Pastor and ran a pretty tight ship at his house. All of his kids are musical prodigies. Growing up they spent a lot of hours practicing because they had no TV, which was ok by them. Although, being a child of cable, it was a little weird for me. The funny part is if you got my cousins in the same room as a TV it was like an alien took over their body because they went comatose. You could not get any sign of life from them because they were sucked into TV Land. Apparently, not watching TV gets rid of the sarcasm jean and replaces it with the nice jean cause they are all pretty cool. Even though some of them get a little cocky and try and take my number 1 spot.

My oldest Aunt who has lived in Ohio since I can remember with her husband and two kids have their share of stories as well. When we were kids we used to go on vacations with them and my cousin Joey, wasn't always on his best behavior. To deal with him sometimes my Aunt and Uncle had this counting system, it was very exciting, cause when they got to the number 3. KAPOW! Now, you may be thinking to yourself a lot of parents count to 3 before they discipline their child. I agree, but this counting system lasted for 24 hours. If you were told one you were stuck on one and only had two more chances to screw up for the rest of the day. My grandpa, will probably deny this, but we used to place bets on what time the number three would pop up. It was good times. My cousin Joey is better now, he is a cool guy who knows everything about sports. My other cousin Missy is a Marine.

My youngest Aunt was like 14 or something when I was born so she was always the one who babysat me and my siblings. We formed a bond with he at an early age. I am sure we have a ton of stories about her babysitting, but we will save that for another time. As we all grew older she became a wife and a mother and started having "rules" of her own for her kids but I will always remember her as the 20 something babysitter who would hit parked cars and listen to the Phantom of the Opera until I wanted to kill myself.

Then we get to my Grandpa. What can I say about this guy! Well, besides my grandma I have most of my memories from him. As a kid, I would go over there on most Saturdays to help him, mow the lawn, build something, or do other forms of yard work. Now, you might be thinking it was slave labor, but you would be wrong because I would get meatball sandwiches at the end. You also might think that after spending most of those Saturdays helping him that I am quite the handy man.....WRONG...I tend to go to my own world when someone is teaching me something. I did however learn my fair share of Old Songs or songs that the slaves used to sing back in the day. Seriously, that wasn't a joke. My grandpa used to sing the greats like.

"My Momma don't tell me"
"Oh Danny Boy"
"Baby Got Back"

All sang by my Grandpa as we worked. My grandparents also took me on trips with them and we would stay in motels with 2 beds. One for me and one for them but late at night my Grandpa would take advantage of the free cable, you know, HBO. So most of this nights were spent with them watching TV and my Grandma holding a pillow over my face, so I couldn't see whatever it was they were watching. Awkward!

Lot of good memories with them, alot of craziness, but more love. Like I said love will equal it out. Maybe next time I will tell you about the time I beat up some kid who was picking on my cousin.

1 comment:

  1. I do remember the incredible power that TV had over our bodies! You couldn't get our attention if you wanted to and there was nothing I could do about it. Good stuff Danny. Next week should be particularly exciting.

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