Thanksgiving Travel Adventure, Part 1

[bloodyrosemccoy]

So you might remember, a few weeks ago I took a trip to see some California family!

I figured I'd try trains because I hate plane travel, so if nothing else this would at least open up a different set of inconveniences and annoyances for me. But it was actually fun!

Preparing

MOM: ... and don't forget to pack underwear and say thank you and don't follow strangers into windowless vans and ...
AUNT: I brought you a travel kit of trail mix and handiwipes!
DAD: If any outlying family members offer you drugs, don't take them!
ME: Why is everyone so dang nervous about this?
MOM: What are you talking about? You're a ball of anxiety, yourself.
ME: Well, yes, but I get this way when I'm going to the grocery store. It's pretty much my default state. It's new with you guys.

So I hopped on the sleeper train, trailing a few more Momisms in my wake, and enjoyed a nice nighttime ride in my own little roomette, which was only occasionally interrupted by the car's tendency to lurch just enough to send me rolling into the wall. But this was still more tolerable when lying in the little bunk than when, say, trying to use the bathroom. But I could live with that sort of thing, because at least I didn't have PLANE NOISE crushing my skull. Did I mention I hate planes?

Experience The Experience!

EVERYONE I MENTIONED TAKING THE TRAIN TO: YOU HAVE TO HAVE THE FULL DINING CAR EXPERIENCE!
ME: Okay, yes! I will do that! Quit yelling!
DINING CAR ATTENDANT: You are required to sit with other passengers. Enjoy your meal!
ME: Hi, folks! Where y'all from?
SOME LADY: (darkly) New Hampshire.
ME: Dang, you're on a long journey.
SOME LADY: I literally do not remember anything before trains.
ME: ... That's nice!
SOME OTHER LADY: I'm a Baptist Sunday school teacher!
SOME GUY: I write for underground anarchist publications.
ME: ...This is going to be an interesting meal.

They're Like Family

The first stop was Sacramento to visit some of my many, many relatives. Ye GODS, I have a lot of relatives. See, Mom's grandmother had like 10 kids, and then most of those kids had some large number of kids, and the upshot is that Mom has eleven siblings and something like fifty-five first cousins, and my own generation's measly 25ish official first cousins is considered restrained. And that's not even counting the honorary pretty-much relatives

And the mind-blowing thing is, Mom and her sisters seem to be able to keep ALL OF THESE PEOPLE, and their entire social spheres, in their heads like some kind of unholy human wikis. I swear to god, Mom's superpowers are all social. Not only can she get conversation out of anybody; she also seems to have a monkeysphere that doesn't seem neurologically possible.

ME: Does your mom launch into stories about people whose names you don't know like she's updating you on a matter you're supposed to know about, too?
THE COUSIN WHO PICKED ME UP FROM THE STATION: Yeah! And when I say, "Who's that?" she looks at me like I've forgotten who my brother is.
ME: And she sighs and goes back to explain who they are, and it turns out those people are, like, her cousin's nephew's ex-girlfriend's kids or something, and she's updating you on their dog's health?
THE COUSIN: As though you even remember that she mentioned that it was feeling sick a month ago, and since then its fate has been preying on your mind? YES.

And people say my cousins and I have nothing in common.

The Thanksgiving Fairies

Thanksgiving was at my 96-year-old Gram's house this year. Gram didn't actually cook it, because a) she's 96, and b) after decades of being a single mother to 12 kids and countless miscellaneous people (it was a weird era) in a tiny one-bathroom house, and some of those decades were the 60s and 70s, she has earned the rest of forever off. So when my siblings drove up from Pleasanton, we mostly sat with her and told each other stories ...

ME: ... See, Gram, it's a book by a comic artist, and the story we're referring to is one where she decides to test her dog's intelligence ...
MY BROTHER: ...so she tries putting it under a blanket to see if it can get out, and it can't ...
MY SISTER: ... so she's thinking, "Well maybe the dog likes it under there" and she keeps testing, and the dog can't do anything ...
ME: ... so finally she puts a treat under a cup and tries to get the dog to get the treat, but the dog can't, so she feels bad and gives the dog the treat anyway ...
MY SISTER: ... but has to reluctantly conclude that her dog is completely stupid. And that's the reference we were making.
GRAM: ... I had some trouble with my husband once ...
MY BROTHER and ME: Good segue, Gram.*

(Turns out the story was about her husband's car-chasing dog. So it fit. Kinda.)

... and made cranberry relish in an old-timey meat grinder ...

ME: I am going to put a bowl on the floor to catch the juice here.
MY SISTER: I will add the sugar!
MY BROTHER: You are the reigning champion of sugar adding, so that is only fair.
ME: By the way, do any of the three of us actually like this stuff?
MY SISTER: ... no.
MY BROTHER: ... no.
MY SISTER: But maybe it just needs more sugar.

... and we went on some kind of marathon mosey that somehow helped feed the hungry ...

ME: I'm having flashbacks to when there would be Events at school and some radio personality would be trying to fire the crowd up like this and I would be just kind of confused about what we were trying to accomplish.
MY BROTHER: Weren't you the emcee at one of those Events?
ME: That was especially confusing.

... and tried not to talk in our impenetrable Sibling Code Talk full of references and in-jokes around the relatives ...

US: *Batman* *comics* *engineering* *linguistics* *Nostalgia Critic* *Disney* *Titans Go!* *science* *book club* *Pacific Rim* *internet internet internet*
MY SISTER: I think we've lost them again.
ME: BIRDS! Birds are things we can all talk about and are familiar with, right?
MY BROTHER: I read a webcomic about birds ...
ME: DAMMIT.

... while some Thanksgiving Fairies zipped in, unloaded a giant incredible Thanksgiving feast ("By the way, did you guys add enough sugar to the cranberry relish?" "Oh, yes. TRUST US.") and then when it was over whisked it away and disappeared into the night like smoke on the wind.

ME: Who were those Thanksgiving Fairies, anyway?
MY BROTHER: Some cousin's inlaws, I think.
ME: I will roll with that.

Then it was off to Pleasanton for my next exciting adventure--meeting my siblings' cat! But that might be a story for another time.


*I do, in fact, paraphrase some of these vignettes, but my brother and I actually did say this. In unison. I did the unison thing a lot with my sister, too, and completely baffled a couple of our younger cousins-once-removed-or-something. "You have to jinx each other AGAIN!" one would shriek, and my sister and I would shrug and say "We'd never get anything done if we did that." Possibly we said that in unison.

Comments

[sofish-sasha.livejournal.com]

...I think we have the same mother. Every now and then she'll start talking about some people I may or may not have met once or twice, months or years ago, and then she's baffled when I don't know who the hell she's talking about.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I get my revenge by launching in media res into whatever the people who live in my head are up to. Except at this point she actually knows all of them, too.

[spiffikins]

my grandmother does this - only she keeps us updated on her neighbours - whom we've never met - and THEIR families. The most hilarious thing, is my grandmother talking about "Hazel, the old lady across the way, whose husband, he died a few years ago" - and we point out that Hazel is in her late 60s and my *grandmother* is in her early 80s - but *Hazel* is "the old lady" across the way.

The worst is when she would forget their names, and be all "you know, Norma and Joe's son's ex-wife's daughter in law? The one who live around the corner from Bill?" And I do not know Norma, Joe OR Bill. But she's hoping I can remember their name for her.

Sadly, at this point, most of my grandmother's updates involve someone dying or being sick, because everyone she knows is SUPER old now.

[wren-chan.livejournal.com]

My mom totally does that thing too! But not only with our own relatives, but with the friends-and-relations of EVERYONE SHE MEETS EVER.

And she expects me to know every single one of them, because I am her clone. Yare yare...

I should start retaliating with the 'people in my head' strategy too. I bet it'd help me write 'em to boot.

[westrider.livejournal.com]

My grandmother does the talking about everyone she's ever met as tho I know exactly who she's talking about thing, too. I find it very gratifying that my mom is nearly as confused by it as I am.

[marsdejahthoris.livejournal.com]

My mother does the ridiculous networking and the updates, but as she's aware that I have trouble recognizing HER in crowds sometimes, and she remembers more of my high school classmates than _I_ do, said updates are usually either couched with "Do you remember Maureen Straub?" (Vividly, Mom, I assure you.) If it's someone I've never met, but she's told me about, it's always with a particular tagline, like a verbal macro. "I went to a concert with my friend Ladorna." It's never just Ladorna, it's "My friend, Ladorna." I like it better than her assuming I remember people, though. :)

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I'm the one who always tags everyone, even when it's completely unnecessary. "You know my friend Liz from college?" "What, the one who was your roommate and best friend for four solid years? YES, I remember her."

[http://users.livejournal.com/_wastrel/]

Family can be such a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granfalloon.

I remember that Hyperbole and a Half!