I think of myself as a mellow guy. Pretty calm and polite. Not a hot-head. Someone who tries to be patient and understanding. And when I see my doctor every year, never once has he questioned my sanity or worried about my mental stability.
Which is why I can’t figure out why, when I’m around family, I absolutely lose my mind and turn into a sputtering volcano of acid and fiery … volcano nuggets? (I don’t know, what do volcanoes spit out?)
But what is it about family that makes relatively mild-mannered, easy-going people crazy? That we turn into monstrous versions of ourselves? That we lose all patience and say things that we will inevitably regret? Like this: “MOM!!! I’m gonna’ take a moment to go outside and spit!”
What does that even mean?!? Who says something like that? What has become of me?!?
This is what I’ve been pondering as my brother and I replace kitchen cabinets at my mother’s house. It’s a project that requires us both to go over there, to my mother’s house, and spend large quantities of time, with my mother, as we work on this project, for my mother, which affords her the freedom to come into the kitchen every 20 seconds and say things like, “Hmmmm, is that REALLY how it’s going to look?” or “So, anyone want a cookie break?” or “Can you please keep it down! The cats need their kitty snack and loud noises give them indigestion!”
The volcano rumbles to life.
My family has always argued. It’s how we communicate. Our own private language. You don’t say something – you argue something … like you’re in Parliament. Names are said with punch and venom – short, nasty, one-syllable assaults. “MOM!!!” “SCOTT!!!” “BRINE!!!” (Two syllable words lack power and snap, so mine is turned into something that you do to a turkey at Thanksgiving.)
If you walk into my mother’s house, you are likely to hear a cacophony of indistinguishable voices all firing off: “Why are you putting that THERE? Because I WANT to put it there! But it doesn’t GO THERE! Yes, but I knew it would make you MAD, so I put it THERE! But that doesn’t make any SENSE!!! NOT EVERYTHING HAS TO MAKE SENSE!!! SCOTT!!!”
And then the floor starts to shake and scientists think, “That’s odd. We don’t get earthquakes in Northeast Florida.”
The more I try to be the calm, patient and understanding member of the lunatic brigade, the more the suppressed acid volcano wants to erupt. Held in check, it finally goes off at the most minute of offenses: “Wait a minute … did YOU throw away that plastic bag?!?”
“What plastic bag?” my mother answers. “You mean the plastic bag I just threw away?
“Yes, the plastic bag you just threw away … why did you throw it away?”
“Why WOULDN’T I throw it away? I wasn’t raised in a barn! It was on the floor. It was GARBAGE! Why didn’t YOU throw it away?!?”
“Maybe because … IT WASN’T GARBAGE! AND I NEEDED IT!!!”
“BRINE!!! … Keep your voice down! The cats are trying to eat their kitty snack and loud noises give them indigestion!”
The Florida scientists just don’t know. Not until they go work on a family project, and then it all makes sense.