Kelly Seeks

In a television perfect family holiday dinner, the bird is a perfect crisp golden brown, cut with perfectly proportioned slices, homemade cranberry sauce (not the ribbed canned jelly kind), stuffing (like the kind stuffed up the birds butt), not dressing, and basically everything else. Every piece of craptaciluar food is all homemade and looks like Betty Crocker baked it and Gordon Ramsey cooked it.

The roboesque humans are dressed in their Sunday best (and for folks who don’t know what that is, it’s like dressy crap; heels, ties, sweater vests and all that). They are obnoxiously laughing like they are surrounded by a dozen standup comedians. Because in addition to that idealic family are a football team sized gaggle of acquaintances. Everything is perfect for them. And they can suck it. Perfect dinner. Perfect clothes. Perfect shiny happy people (cue everyone singing the R.E.M. song). There wouldn’t be enough alcohol in that house to keep my spirits up.

However, our family truly has something to be thankful for this year. It’s been found that there is a family more dysfunction than us. We are elated and we are proud!

To celebrate, we broke out the boxed wine and plastic cups. I mean, we are particularly proud of our statues. No pun, witticism, or innuendo (except maybe the sexual ones for giggles), will bring our family off the delirious and euphoric feeling we get when we all enter the room.

For our family females; our voices rise higher to glass shattering levels of laughter. While the pure volume between us all overshadows a Beatles concert. Whereas our men folk have hearing loss or “accidental” selective hearing.

We have held our own in comparison to the Griswald, Conner, Simpson and Bundy families for quiet some time. Praising ourselves for the level of insane oddities and crazy antics that take place when we gather. This year we added a new holiday to our infamous family get togethers: Crap Trading Day!

We’ve decided no crap is too small or insignificant to trade. I guess we’d all rather see it go to one of us, rather than sell it for a dollar at a garage sale. Who’s kidding; we are too lazy for garage sales. Dealing with cheapskates before coffee and dawn isn’t in our gene pool. Instead, we would rather haul it 8 hours across 6 different states and chance taking it back home again. Furthermore, born or married into this family does not grant you exceptions to heckling, teasing or mocking. Yes, we have been noted to be stubborn and hold grudges for literally years. We just have that much stamina.

Growing up I watched all those holiday movies with the gag reflex perfect family and realized mine wasn’t; and I loved it that way.

I didn’t have to wear a starched soaked dress I couldn’t sit down in; because I could wear my pjs all day at my grandmas house. I didn’t have to care about sucking it in at a table not big enough to hold all the people- because that meant I got to sit by both, my mom and grandma, with it being just the three of us.

Perfect is how you see it. Perfect to me is knowing my kids will have a tantrum on Christmas Day because they are tired from staying up all night waiting for Santa. Perfect is giving my only cousin grief because he is the “baby” of the family. My perfect will not be the same as the ones on tv or the same as you see it. That is ok with me. The question is are you ok with it? If you aren’t; get a grip, put your big girl panties on and grow up.