Last night (Monday night), the neighbor's wife came over, bearing Christmas presents for the cats.
As I was busy with something else, she sat down at the computer to read conservativecave, and what I'd written here that day. I disremember what thread or comment it was--either in the thread about disability or the thread about men's colognes, it could've been either one--when she ominously commented, "You're not as good an actor as that.
"When someone comes up to you too fast and too close, you do recoil back like a rattlesnake getting ready to strike; it's obvious. You look like someone so disgusted and horrified you want to go somewhere, take off your clothes and burn them, wash your body all over, and then put on new clothes, as if you've come into contact with something contaminating and loathesome--and it's obvious.
"You're not as good an actor as that."
Well, I said, I exaggerate mildly, once in a while.
"That's why the before the first time you met [her aunt], I was careful that you'd know all about her before meeting her.
"I was afraid her nose-ring might be a turn-off."
She reminded me her aunt was coming for Christmas Day, which was news to me, until I figured out I'd probably been told it by her or her husband a long time ago, but didn't catch it.
Okay, now I'm going to get it from people here; franksolich making fun of poor handicapped people, in this case someone severely mentally-ill. I'm going to get it left and right, I'm going to get beat all over the head and shoulders, because I'm ridiculing pathetic people more deserving of compassion and understanding.
I'm really going to get it.
However, God gave us judgement, and as with all gifts from God, we're supposed to use it.
Not all nuts are worthy of charitable judgement; there are exceptions, and this is one of them.
I was aghast. "But the children, and you're expecting in April, too."
I was told that the children--two 5-year-old twin girls and a 3-year-old boy--would spend the day with their grandparents, so as to not be upset. During Thanksgiving 2009, the two little girls thought they were being punished for something, seeing this great-aunt of theirs, and had nightmares for a couple of weeks.
The neighbor's wife and her brother down south take turns hosting this aunt of theirs; last year, the aunt was up here for Thanksgiving, and this year she's coming up here for Christmas.
The night before the holiday, the neighbor drives way over to Sioux City, Iowa, to pick her up at the bus depot, she having come from Kansas City, Missouri. He stuffs her into the pick-up truck under the cover of darkness, and on the way home, very carefully drives less than the speed-limit, so he won't be stopped by a cop.
And then the night after the holiday, the neighbor again stuffs his aunt-in-law into the pick-up truck, in the blackness of the night taking her back to Sioux City to catch the bus going back down to Kansas City.
They allow no one else to come to their house (other than franksolich) while the neighbor's wife's aunt is there, and if someone does come, they remind the aunt there's something for her down in the basement, getting her out of sight for a while.
Seeing that I hadn't grasped it the first time it had been told me, the neighbor's wife got worried.
"But you're still coming, right?"
"I wouldn't miss it for all the tea in China," I said.
