Best/most painful moments from the two weeks I spent in Missouri with my family

One

Me: My bedroom is freezing! It’s the coldest room in the house.

Father: No it’s not. It’s always warmer upstairs; heat rises.

Me: I sleep in that room and I’m telling you it’s cold.

Father: No it’s not.

(At this point I draft my mother to go upstairs with me to confirm the relative coldness of my room)

Mother: She’s right. Her room is really cold.

Father: I knew you women would conspire against me, you always do. That room is the warmest in the house.

Me: I can tell when a room is cold! Go check for yourself.

Father: I’m not going to waste my time checking to see if a room is cold when I know it’s not.

(Mother hustles me out of the room before an incident can ensue)

Two

My mother, father, and I watch Juno. My mom was reluctant, but as usual my father and I bulldoze over her opinion and pop the movie in. During the sweet, cheery song at the end my father and I discuss how charming the movie was and we both turn to my mother so she can reinforce our opinion, only to see that she is crying. At that moment my father and I remembered that my mother gave a baby up for adoption when she was 15, and the cheeky, irreverent tone of Juno was more painful for her than any dark exploration of teen pregnancy would have been. We also remembered that we are insensitive assholes.

Three

Best statement made by my uncle: “The Mexicans are killing American with their language. It’s a scientific fact that a country can’t survive if the people speak more than one language.”

Four

On Memorial Day my grandfather and I are at the Wal-Mart outdoor garden center searching for flowers to decorate graves. I’m on the opposite side of the center from my grandfather checking out the lilies, when he starts to whack at his pants in a frantic manner. He hops up and down, cussing freely. I start to hustle toward the peonies to see what’s wrong, when my grandfather drops his pants, revealing his tightly whities and a pair of battling bumble bees. I veer off toward a display of fake flowers, which I become deeply interested in. Later that night, on a midnight trip to the bathroom I see a startlingly white and emaciated figure lumbering evilly down the hallway and I give a shriek of fear and surprise before I realize it is not the ghost of an Auschwitz victim, but my second sighting in one day of my grandfather in his underwear.