If a Tree Falls in the Woods, and No One is There to Hear It Bitch…

I use the logic that if there is no one to tell stories to, no one will tell stories. I make up a ruse so my daughter and I can leave the porch to busy ourselves in the kitchen. Perhaps assembling 100 or so cheese and cracker combinations artfully on a platter is excuse enough.

I am torn between competing impulses:

Call my sister and beg her to join us and thusly offset the cosmic imbalance of the universe.

Grab my children, J., the plate of canapés, and what remains of the bottle of wine and run for cover at my brother-in-laws brother’s nearby house. There is comfort in not having to explain my family there.

Breathe into a paper bag.

Instead, I sneak a peak in the direction of the Harris cottage.

Mrs. Harris appears to have resumed breathing without the Heimlich, and I am trying to convince myself that it was late enough for Bill’s voice to have been disembodied by darkness and that Mrs. Harris will not know it was my sister’s evil relatives that unleashed the rude comment. No dice. I can see her and she me.

Shame is such a heinous emotion. Why did my sister and I get the shame gene and everyone else in the clan did not?

To fan the flames even more violently, when I return to the porch with the platter bearing no fewer than a gross of hors d’oeuvres, I discover that while my logic about storytelling held water it does not apply to bickering.

The Lockhorns are locking horns over their second favorite topic. Second only to politics as defined by Fox News’ slant on them.

Taxes.

Sales tax.
Property tax.
Personal property tax.
Estate taxes.

And for them, the conversation naturally veers precariously off to a topic that makes its home in a location just this side of Hell.

WHO EXACTLY WILL GET WHAT EXACTLY WHEN BILL BITES THE DUST?

And I stand there with a platter of Ritz Crackers and Jarlsberg Swiss willing myself to die at that very instant.