The Wee Witherspoons

I just got done making two pounds of peanut brittle and six pounds of chocolate fudge, both with and without walnuts. This is my way of saying, "I know I'm irredeemable, but could you please continue to love John regardless?" to John's parents.

Okay, first off, go here and watch the animation.

It isn't work safe, so if you can't watch it, the lyrics are:

one time I sucked six in a row
one time I sucked six dirty dicks in a row
one time I got my kicks with Joe
and I sucked his dick
and five of his friends in a row

Got that? This will come up later.

Now, the Witherspoons aren't really wee, they're normal-sized, but that means that they can both sleep on the full size bed in the guest room, which is an alien idea to me, hence the nickname I gave them. It makes Richard cackle every time I say it. He calls them Wilma and Willie, even though he's never met them. (Not their real names.)

Also, Willie and Wilma Witherspoon were painted by Norman Rockwell. I have never met more gentle, intelligent, and generally at-peace parents in my entire life, which of course means that I'm even more of a wreck around them than normal, because I just don't get that. Parents are supposed to be wound-up, judgmental sociopaths. That I can deal with. John's parents however are wonderful, so naturally I have no idea what to do with them. I get all frantic and anxious and act like a retard and say horrible, horrible things. Yeah, I know. Me. I hope you were sitting down.

So the first time I met them, John's whole immediate family was together for Easter or something. I forget what. All I know is that his niece and nephew had a boatload of chocolates that they fed John as a reward for giving them endless horsey rides.

They were five and three, so they didn't burden him too badly, but they'd kick him in the ribs and wouldn't agree on directions and it just went on for hours. Yes, I switched with him and gave them horsey rides too, so don't look at me like that. I can uncle when I need to.

While this was going on, John's sister and her husband were in the kitchen talking about work with John's parents, which is easy for them, because oh yeah, I forgot to tell you, all of them are fucking brilliant, and they all have PhDs and professorships at various colleges across the country, except for John's mother, who only has her Master's, but has eased her nearly unsupportable shame by becoming a successful artist. As in, gets paid to paint. So yeah, no pressure, Matthew. What do you do again? Make fudge? That's nice.

So we eat the awesome dinner that John's brother-in-law made, and then we're back on the floor with the kids. We're giving horsey rides, and playing with the nephew's wooden train, and blowing bubbles, and dancing like little princesses, and singing doofy songs, and all that. It is important for you to understand that at this point, I was in full-tilt corndog uncle mode.

John stands up, brushes off his pants, and announces that it's getting late, and we should be getting home. The kids erupt into pleading. He is, after all, their favorite uncle.

"Noooooo! Please stay Uncle John! Just one more horsey ride? Pleeeeeeeeease?"

And then I say, because I'm still in innocent, dorky uncle mode, "I'm sorry, he's right. We have to go home now. It's his turn to give me a horsey ride."

As the words left my mouth, I thought, that could be misinterpreted. Dead silence. Dead fucking silence. Three full seconds. Then I said, "Well, that wasn't Freudian or anything." More silence. A tumbleweed. In the distance, a dog barked.

On the way home, with my face buried in my hands, I said to John, "I can't fucking believe I said that."

John, because he loves me, and wanted to ease my pain, said, "I can't either."

So a few months go by, and because The Wee Witherspoons are gentle and loving people, they say, "Okay, we love John, and we want him in our lives, so we have to be forgiving," and start calling us again. I'm on triple-perfect-angel good behavior with them. We don't talk about The Incident. We pretend that The Incident never happened. We don't even acknowledge that horses ever existed.

Then, one day, I came home from work and walked into the house, singing this remix of the song above AT THE TOP OF MY LUNGS. With hand gestures and everything, since I'm so street an' shit, yo. I walked around the hallway to the office, and saw that John was at his desk on the phone. He was on the phone, and making that throat slashing gesture that you make when you want someone to shut the fuck up right now. He was clenching his eyes shut and biting his almost non-existent lips, so intense was the shut-upness of the situation. So I shut up.

Then John paused, sighed, and said, "Yeah, that was Matthew," to his parents in Arizona, who both get on the phone at the same time when they call us, so that they may soak up my humiliation more efficiently.

So now we have that. I'm on perfect-angel probation for the rest of my life. Hence the fudge.

Please, God. Let them like fudge.