Here's How it is at My House During Christmas...

So, I’m standing in the kitchen with my Dad, my Uncle, and my Uncle’s friend, and we’re all smoking weed.

My Mom comes by, and my uncle turns to her with the mini-bong. “Maureen, you have to try some of this!”

“No way!” my Mom says, “I tried it once and I couldn’t even get off the couch.” This is a story I’ve heard many times. In fact I hear it most every family holiday when my Uncle tries to get my Mom to smoke weed.

“Ah, come on…”

“Nope. Uh, Uh.” she said. “I was so out of it someone else had to put my babies to bed.”

Someone else putting your babies to bed is a very-bad-thing in my Mom’s book.

Mom made her exit—sort of scurried out of the kitchen. (The older my Mother gets, the more she seems to scurry.)

My uncle tried some good old fashioned peer pressure. He announced “Oh, she’s one of those people who tries something once and never tries it again.”

“Yeah,” my Dad pipes up, “She’s the same way with anal sex.”

Uh,

You know when you’ve been throwing up, and your body wants to throw up more but there’s nothing left, and you heave anyway? Your whole body tenses up, and for a second, time just stops. That’s what it was like, but in my brain.

“Noooooooooo!”

My hands clamped to my ears.

“Not in front of the kids!”

I couldn’t see. Everything was blurry. I knew I was screaming, and I knew I was screaming loud. People in the living room wanted to know what happened. “Nothing! Nothing happened! Arhhgh!” I managed to stumble in very loud shrieking circles—my hands fastened to my ears—and find my way out of the kitchen.

I hid in the garage for about five minutes.

My Uncle laughed so hard he hurt his damn back.