Summer! School’s out, kids are underfoot, the family reunion is just around the corner. Soon you’ll be eating your weight in fruit salad and local BBQ while gossiping about who got married, who ate their latest partner, who’s gained weight, and who’s developed a strange taste for antifreeze since the last reunion!
You might have to endure several uncomfortable pinches from Aunt Maureen (on both sets of cheeks, if you know what I mean), but you can breathe easy–the usual no-shows have already RSVP’d “Not Attending” for this year!
1. Grandpa Joe aka the kraken from Tamora Pierce’s Wild Magic
Every year it’s the same old thing. Grandpa Joe swears he’s going to make it out. This year will be different, he says, but nope, he always calls the night before everyone is set to arrive and whines about how difficult it is to travel with his bulk–you heard he’s the size of Alaska now, right?–and why couldn’t they have the gathering closer to Hawaii? It’s probably for the best that he never comes–he always leaves such a mess in his wake.
2. Cousins Flotsam and Jetsam aka Ursula’s minions in The Little Mermaid
After Cousin Dan said Flotsam’s skin was looking a bit patchy, well, Jetsam tried to strangle him, so they’re pretty much personae non gratae at the reunions. No great loss, though; it’s not like they ever contributed much to planning the events. A few years ago they were asked to bring ice and they couldn’t even manage that. Have you ever seen what happens to a party when there’s only warm beer and soda? It’s depressing, ends very early, and usually there’s a lot of vomit.
3. Moby Dick aka the whale from Moby-Dick aka have you been living under a rock?
He’s just too damn old to care about seeing his relatives anymore, we’re happy to say. Look at his dead eyes, those missing teeth. And that godawful tendency of destroying ships–do you know what his insurance premiums are like? It’s depressing. Honestly, it’s probably for the best that he no longer makes the trip–he scares the kids and eats all the potato salad.
4. Scylla and Charybdis aka from Greek myths, duh
Apart from being total pains in the ass about travel arrangements, Scylla and Char actually do know how to liven up a party, so it’s almost a shame that they can only make it once a century. The last time they left the narrow passage they’ve chosen to guard, they brought ships to wreck and fresh sailors were on the menu, but then they took off in the middle of the night and left the rest of us to deal with cleanup and the inevitable government sanctions for ruining local economies–a real party foul.
via Flickr
5. Donald Trump aka You-Know-Who (no, the other one) aka the Creature from the Black Lagoon
Can we all stop pretending that Trump didn’t claw his way out of some forbidden primordial ooze on the ocean floor? He is not one of us. No one knows who he’s related to in the family and we’re all too afraid to ask. Even Grandpa Joe isn’t sure when Trump started showing up, but we all know when he stopped coming to the reunions: 1988, when he first started floating the idea of running for president. Thankfully, our reunions have been spared ever since and the American public has to deal with him now.
We all live in fear of the year when these relatives will actually make it to the reunion, because it more than likely heralds the end of the world as we know it, but until then, we’ll party on and drink away the pain of sand getting where sand really shouldn’t go!
Featured image via Pixabay.