Archive for December, 2007
Each and every year, no matter how much I protest, my family always buys me clothing. I can't tell you how many times I have received some kind of hideous knitted sweater that is 10 times the size of me with some kind of gold-foiled flower on the bosom. Since I am about a foot taller than anyone in my household, everyone thinks that makes me morbidly obese and buys me enormous clothing.
“Oh, Stephie, ve just got it a few sizes bigger in case you need to grow into it,” they always claim.
I’m 25. The only thing that’s growing is my hatred of knitted sweaters.
Growing up, Grandma always made me wear ugly sweaters no matter how huge or moth-ball-smelling they were. Of course, I had to wear them on top of itchy, probably expensive, imported, hand-embroidered Hungarian undershirts. To this day, she still comes up behind me, lifts my shirt, and screams, "A Vese! Ing! Ing!" (Her Kidneys! Undershirt! Undershirt!) She would always say, "You're kidneys are exposed, you are going to catch your death!" Last time I checked, my kidneys...
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No matter how hard I look for "the perfect gift," every year my mother opens her present, make a sour face, and says, “Oh, is dis from the Dollar Store?”
“No, Mom, they don’t sell 24K gold necklaces at the Dollar Store, but you keep looking.”
She then looks at me suspiciously. “Did somevon just gif dese to you and you’re givink dem to me?”
“No, Anyu, I just bought them online last week. Wanna see the receipt?”
“Oh, my God, you didn’t buy dem on Dah Ebay did you? Are these used? I don’t vant to catch AIDs…”
"No, actually, I bought them off some diseased hobo on the street corner for $5. He gave them to me for a great price - all I needed to do was give him my social security number and your maiden name. Pretty good deal, huh?"
This is when I usually get dirty looks. My mother doesn't appreciate the full range of my sarcasm.
My cousin Erin usually hosts the family Christmas party. Over the years, Erin has learned that if she wants a party to get started at 2 pm, she has to tell my aunt Sophie that it is at noon, so my aunt will have sufficient time to wake up late, shower, make a sumptuous breakfast for her husband, do her makeup, vacuum the house, wash and wax the car, run into some burning buildings to save some orphaned children, and go last minute Christmas shopping. Erin then has to tell my mother that the party is at 3 pm because or else my mother will arrive three hours early, just in case there is traffic on the two mile stretch of highway she has to travel every day in the New Jersey suburban nightmare we call our home.
Last year, everything seemed to work out just right and Nagymama arrived with my mother right on time and marveled at my cousin’s beautifully decorated bi-level home.
After
Nagymama's last run-in with the law, my mom was very hesitant to allow her to walk anywhere. But one beautiful spring day,
Nagymama insisted that she needed to go buy a lottery ticket from the corner store because of the upcoming $4 million "Mega Jackpot."
"I'm doing this for the good of the family,"
Nagymama protested in Hungarian, "We will be so happy when we can buy a bi-level home. I'll be right back."
Nagymama left for her walk and locked the gate behind her. After about thirty minutes, we started to hear sirens from around the corner. My mom rummaged through our tin of random keys.
"Oh, no, I
tink Nagymama took both gate keys."
Just then, ambulance whizzed by. I immediately started climbing the fence.
“No, no, no!” my mother screamed, “You gonna fall and break your neck. I’ll go to
dah garage and get
sometink to cut the
kapu!”
“Do you know how...
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Last year, my family and I had just gotten back from one of our usual holiday excursions to HomeGrown Buffet, and my cousin Irina and I were sharing juicy gossip on the couch while Nagymama neurotically rearranged the items in our house.
“Oh, Cousin,” she cooed, using her usual Balki Bartokomous impersonation, “Once again, your mother has managed to mortify me.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Nagymama pacing all over the living room. I sighed and tried to ignore it. “So, what did Anyu do this time?”
“Well, Lisa from church just got married and asked me to watch her cat for a week. She just got back, and before I was even able to ask, ‘How was your trip?’ your mother butted in and said, ‘You know, Lisa, you are not qualified to be a cat owner. You just dumped your cat on Irina.'”
“Oh, man….”
“Lisa looked so shocked and pissed that she didn’t even know what to say. So, of course, your mother just kept on talking, ‘I tink dah cat likes Irina more than it likes you. But Irina doesn’t even like cats, so...
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Each and every year, no matter how much I protest, my family always buys me clothing. I can't tell you how many times I have received some kind of hideous knitted sweater that is 10 times the size of me with some kind of gold-foiled flower on the bosom. Since I am about a foot taller than anyone in my household, everyone thinks that makes me morbidly obese and buys me enormous clothing.
