Jokers Wild

So now we wait.

What happens next depends largely on who opens the envelope.

There are a number of plausible outcomes:

a) Joe reads it, flies into a tantrum, and frantically contacts everyone in the family except my sister to rant in lengthy, meaningless, excessively loud run-on sentence fragments.

b) Mary-ellen (yes, hyphenated with lowercase second name...don't ask. I've stopped.) will open it and that hair that looks like it was subject to a nuclear holocaust, (Crayola would call it Kodak Film Box Yellow) will stand on end, and she will erupt in a rage toward my brother that takes on volcanic qualities, and her face will melt off in a scene not at all unlike that one toward the end of the first Raiders of the Lost Ark movie.

c) Mary-ellen will read it and in hissing, spitting, profanity-laced sentences, seethe that this is the reason why she has always loathed my brother's family and this letter is further proof that she is justified in her decades-long campaign to distance their little family from the extended family. Take my wife, please.

d) All of the above.

What can be assumed will not be among the potential responses, is a reasonable, measured, calm, reflective absorption of the material facts presented, followed by a phone call offering to peaceably discuss how the broken familial bonds might be restored.

Not a chance.

Whatever the response, it will be the kind of thing YouTube was invented for:

Slapstick.
Haphazard.
Unrehearsed.
The participants having no idea how hilarious their facial contortions and unbridled emotions can be to people removed from the situation.
Even funnier if set to music. Preferably John Phillips Sousa.

And then, when the fur has stopped flying, and the cushion stuffing has floated to the carpet, and the bric-a-brac lay in smithereens on the floor, and the cat has gone into deep cover beneath the barcalounger, and the children have fled to their friends' homes where cooler (and presumably better groomed) heads prevail, my brother and his wife, together or alone, will begin to plot their responses.

His will lamely endeavor to be a retort of some kind.

Hers will bear all the hallmarks of a full-blown counter attack.

Revenge always seems so much sweeter at this stage in the game.