Norman Gentle Could Be My Cousin
Warning: I just finished this post, and it goes nowhere and makes no sense. Also, it makes my family sound like freaks. However, everything in it is true, and it actually amuses me a lot. So I’m going to post it anyway, but I truly do not recommend that anyone read it.
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Remember Aunt Kay who looks exactly like Eric Clapton? Well, I noticed the WEIRDEST thing tonight. I was watching “American Idol.” You know the comedian singer guy Nick (also known as Norman Gentle)?
Well, he is identical to Cousin David. Cousin David is Aunt Kay’s son.
This is not the most tantalizing blog post I’ve ever written, but I just feel this odd need to let everyone know about this. Let me make it at least a tad more interesting…
Cousin David is…well, no one really knows how to complete that sentence. Cousin David moved far, far away from the family. He lives 5 hours from home, is about 40 years old, yet I have heard that his mother somehow still does his laundry.
Cousin David also had a ton of credit card debt which his mom and dad paid off for him. Then it happened again, and I think they paid it off again.
I never talk to Cousin David, Aunt Kay (aka Eric Clapton), or Uncle Buddy. However, I know all about their business because my mom and her other sisters constantly gossip about how annoying each sister is. (They’re a little codependent. It can’t be helped. Well, not by me anyway. You’re welcome to try to help any of them with their codependency–it would be very entertaining for me to watch that conversation–particularly if you tried to have it with Aunt Selma. )
What the heck was I talking about??? OH, David.
Yes, so David is somewhat “hidden away.” I suspect there could be a few very good reasons for that. I think we can all think of a few reasons one might want to do that.
So, it just hit me as I was watching “American Idol” that Normal Gentle looks so much like my Cousin David. Then I thought–we know nothing about David. We haven’t seen David in like 15 years. For all we know, Norman Gentle could be my Cousin David. My Cousin David could be anyone.–an FBI agent, an Obama advisor, my son’s guitar teacher…No one would know except Aunt Kay–because he’d still have to call her to do his laundry…It’s kind of strange to know of this family but to know almost nothing about them. Except what Kay’s sisters say–but those are just the same 5 stories repeated over and over–that’s not a lot of info.
Now that this blog post has become totally, irreversibly bizarre, I’m going to go ahead and just tack on one of the 5 stories that gets repeated about Aunt Kay. I have heard this story at least 800 times, though truly, once would have etchedthe horror of it in my mind forever. Here we go: When Kay was a teenager, she had a pet chicken. The chicken only had one leg. (I don’t know why she had a chicken, nor do I know why the chicken was missing a leg.) Apparently the chicken was “drug” into a hole by a snake or some other animal, and it died. This upset Kay to no end, and she cried for days and could never eat chicken for the rest of her life. Everyone thinks this story is funny. But it’s not funny. It’s disturbing.
See–I warned you that I didn’t recommend reading this. It’s 10:30–I have no business posting right now.
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Two things, maybe there are only five stories – I know I tell my stories over and over and when I am reminded I say, hey I only have so many stories and only a few are really worth telling – yeah, probably five.
Second: We have an urban legend about my grandmother who had some banti chickens. The chickens just ran around the yard. One day my grandma opened a jar of bad cherries, the seal had gone bad. She dumped the cherries out on the ground and the bantis ran over and ate the cherries right up. About an hour later she noticed that all her bantis were laying dead in the back yard. She surmised that the cherries had killed them. Being the good practical farm women she was she plucked them while they were still warm. She laid them all out by her back door intending to finish the butchering after she got dinner started. A couple of hours later came out to finish her butchering and found all her bantis running around with no feathers. I guess the cherries were just fermented and the little bantis had just passed out from being drunk. – There you go. Now that’s a chicken story.
Now THAT is a chicken story, in deed. Nothing like drunk, featherless chickens that are revived from a near death experience!
Now a chicken question. I SWEAR when I was little I saw some chickens hanging upside down on a tree branch once. (Aunt Selma had lots of chickens. I hated them bc of what they’d eat–you know, the corn cycle (‘ll avoid expanding on that as a favor to those who don’t understand what it means.) Also they chased me and tried to “get” me. Yuck.
Anyway, is there any scenario in which a chicken could have been hanging upside down on a tree? My cousin Tim was there too–he probably staged this.
Also, Granny would not be proud of my lack of common chicken terminology–but what’s a “banti”?
The chicken up side down. Hmmm…the only exerpience I can relate to an upside down bird was a sparrow I shot with my BB Gun. The BB must hit a nerve that caused the feet, claws – whatever those things are, to freeze around the branch. It died right there on the tree branch upside down – Hey at least the worms didn’t get him right away.
A banti (maybe the correct spelling is banty) is a chicken that is smaller than a normal chicken. I don’t know much more than that. When I have seen them they have always been left to run free. I know they are really quick and fast. At least faster than me – I could never catch one. It was probably some joke my uncle played on me. “Hey go catch a banti for me.” I tried. Who knows maybe he is still laughing.
There usefulness is an asumption. I am guessing they keep the insect population in check. Heck I only lived on a farm for the first six years of my life. How much can an six year old know?
Adam is a True Showman and nomater what his sexual preferrence! I love his awsome talent.