“Dinner with the Family”

As a kid there were things that I learned to expect when it came to certain family members of mine, for example my Uncle Jim would always be brought home by the cops after a night of drinking like a fish and pulling the old “chew and screw” scam without fail.

Now for you dysfunctionally challenged people out there in cyberspace, the chew and screw is when you go to a restaurant and order and bunch of food and drink, living it up as if you were large like Trump when in all reality you are tiny like Tim, then when the bill comes making a mad dash to the door with the hopes of not getting caught.

There was this one time in Philadelphia when my uncle came home just as shitfaced as ever and ready to go. Knowing he didn’t have any money but wanting to get his grub on anyways he decided he was going to dine at one of the local restaurants in our area…one that served alcohol of course.

This time however, he invited me and my siblings to go along for the ride and with me being a little older than the others I knew what was going to transpire, but being hungry and up for some excitement I decided to tagalong.

As we approached the door I started feeling a little uneasy but I knew it was too late to back out so I just had to suck it up and not say a word, and as we walked through the restaurant towards our table I felt as if every eye in the place was on us.

The waitress came over to introduce herself and to hand us our menus, she was as pleasant as could be and so friendly that she felt like part of the family…a family that screws each other over but still a family nevertheless. My uncle, still drunk off his ass, told the waitress to call him “Sheamus” because all his friends did.

As I looked over the menu it felt as if I was in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”…only I didn’t hear the heartbeat of my victim under the floor boards, it was the screaming of the waitress as she brought the check only to find out she wasn’t getting paid.

I finally relaxed a little and realized if I was going to get in trouble I might as well make it worth it, so I made sure we had appetizers and of course the most expensive food and drink on the menu. If I was going to go out…I was going to go out with a bang.

The food came and we were all having a gay old time, laughing and carrying on like nobody’s business. Then out of nowhere my uncle started making the strange noises, which kind of sounded like flatulence, so me being the mature person I was I said, “look he’s farting” then started laughing like Beavis and Butt-head.

After realizing that he was in fact not farting, but choking on a piece of filet mignon, my sister who was sitting next to him in the booth jumped up and grabbed him out of his seat and started doing her version of the Heimlich maneuver on him…which looked like some crazy wrestling move with him flailing all over the place and his arms swinging about like as if he was trying to fly.

Thankfully there was someone there who actually knew how to do the Heimlich and stepped up and saved the day and after all the commotion died down the waitress brought another drink…of course one of the alcoholic kind…to my uncle and said, “here you go Sheamus…this ones on the house”…little did she know so were the rest of them and all the food too.

Now us being the type of family we were, we could find humor in just about anything even if the rest of society couldn’t. So we’re all sitting there laughing like a pack of hyenas because of all that transpired, well all of us except my uncle who was still trying to catch his breath that is. All the other patrons started looking at us like as if we had two heads, and to make matters worse my sister was laughing so hard that she wet herself.

We were sitting in a booth…one with wooden benches…so all you heard was the sound of water going over the edge like as if it was a waterfall and splashing onto the floor. My uncle was oblivious and didn’t move a muscle, my other brother who was sitting next to her against the wall realized what happened and jumped up on the seat while screaming to be let out of the booth. 

So when all the choking was done and laughter ended the waitress came over and asked Sheamus if he wanted the kids to leave since happy hour was about to start. Seeing my opportunity to escape I quickly shouted over my uncle that I agreed, and that I would be more than happy to take the kids home while he stayed and enjoyed happy hour.

I know I took the coward’s way out…I should have gone down with the sinking ship and been a man…but I’m too soft to go to jail and didn’t feel like being on the receiving end of a hot beef injection (my dirt road is an exit only, no oncoming traffic) so I took off like a jack rabbit.

Without fail later the night the cops came knocking on our door with my uncle in cuffs asking if he did indeed lived there and if anyone could pay his tab, otherwise he would be going to the joint. The moral of the story is this, make sure when you do something wrong you have a guaranteed out…even if it means throwing a family member to the wolves.

MJM