GlossyVeneer

I am the oldest grandkid on my mom’s side of the family. My brother is the next closest in age, just a couple years younger than me. The next closest of the other grandkids is about 6 years younger than me. My uncle Brent was just 14 when I was born. So when I was small, he used to tease me mercilessly. To the point of tears most of the time. I remember one year, all I really wanted for Christmas was a Cornsilk Cabbage Patch Doll.

(If you don’t remember Cabbage Patch Kids, they’re pretty ugly dolls that are supposedly born in a cabbage patch. I don’t remember exactly if the stork picks the cabbage head babies or how they’re ‘harvested’, but I do remember that they come with adoption papers and supposedly the kid who receives the doll is the new adoptive parent. The adoption papers usually have some creepy, bizarre name for the doll, such as Irmatrude Belvedeen or whatever. The ‘Cornsilk’ variety of these dolls had REAL hair, instead of yarn hair. The REAL hair was probably made of a nylon or some substance like that. But you could supposedly fix the hair, just like real hair. Most kids I knew just ended up with a giant-matted-mess for the hair after you’d removed the initial braids or pigtails the doll comes with.)

Anyway, back to my story of Christmas and the doll. I was probably being a pain in the ass by telling everybody that I wanted the doll. But most kids are a pain when they figure out something they really want for Christmas. Christmas morning rolled around and I saw a present that was the shape of the Cabbage Patch box. I squealed and beelined for it. It had my name on it and I knew I had received my doll. After being tortured for a few minutes while other people opened gifts, I opened my present. As I peeled the paper back and saw the logo for the Cabbage Patch Kids on the top of the box, I got more and more excited. I tore the paper off and looked through the clear cellophane packaging on the front, only to find an orange and a small box of Frosted Flakes inside. I was, of course, devastated and started crying. I went through the entire morning of Christmas thinking that Santa had played a cruel trick on me, by giving me the box but no doll. In the afternoon, my uncle admitted that he had smuggled the doll out of the package, replaced her with the food items and re-wrapped the gift. I did get my doll later that day, but that was probably the pinnacle of the pranks he played on me. Other pranks range from throwing dead fish at me at a lake to tripping me to calling me names. He still teases me to this day, but most of the time I just look at him, raise one eyebrow and he stops. I think since he has kids of his own now, he realizes he probably wouldn’t want anybody to be quite that mean to them. But teasing me is still a great temptation for him.

So I was pleasantly surprised to get an email from him today. He just kind of outlined some of the things that were going on in his family. Then he said the following:

“How is my favorite and beautiful niece doing? I think about you often. I think it is because I admire and respect you so much. I think that you are a great person and if I could adopt many of your traits I would. I just wanted to say hi and have a nice day.”

That was a nice email. I guess I always knew he didn’t hate me, but I didn’t realize that he admired me much either. I’ve always thought I was the “bad” one of all the nieces/nephews/grandkids on my mom’s side of the family. Guess there’s at least one person that thinks otherwise!

Song playing now: Again by Lenny Kravitz