How Things Work in My New Hometown

After work, we had to head over to a family event (a viewing, sorry to say) where we met five church members, two of Allen’s co-workers, and about fifty family members. I subsequently learned that Allen is related to basically the same families on both sides, via a family tree that looks somewhat like the wisteria that winds through the trees in the yard. This one had a sister who married the brother of the aunt on her paternal side, who was married to someone else on her maternal side, and his cousin is also his nephew…. My head spins considering this. I am going to draw myself a diagram for further reference.

After the viewing, we head over to a local restaurant, where we see our auto mechanic (who is now basically a family member since we see him more than we see our own family, thanks to the Corvette) and his wife eating dinner. We sit next to a large table of high school students, two of which are in Allen’s class. Our waitress graduated from another high school, but her boyfriend is the stepbrother- well, not exactly the brother, but a friend of the family who lives with them who basically is a family member- of a kid in Allen’s class, who, incidentally, told Allen that he “talked like a girl” (to which Allen replied: “You look like a girl.”). Now the boyfriend of our waitress also had Allen as a teacher (and said very nice things about him and his class). And our waitress is also the babysitter of one of the doctors who works with me in the hospital. And, no, he doesn’t own the late-model Corvette in the doctor’s parking lot, as I had speculated.

Anyways, the owner of the red Corvette is still a mystery, though I expect to meet the sister of the wife of the husband who works in the Emergency Room who heard from a nurse that the doctor who drives that car is….. my husband’s cousin.

Editorial Comment:
On a serious note, I’m sick of hearing about how stifling small-town life is. As humorous as I found the incident above, I see it in a different light after I read about the gunman in Pennsylvania who, according to reports, blew away half of a Latin Cardio class at his gym because he was bitter and angry that he was rejected by women his whole life. We can never say that “it can’t happen here.” But I suspect that he wouldn’t have been so anonymous and marginalized here in Wayx. Instead of a lone blogger, broadcasting his hatred of women and his detailed plan for revenge into the black hole of cyberspace, he’d be “so and so’s weirdo cousin that we had to call the law on back in July because he was talking crazy sh**”