Uncle John’s Words of Wisdom

I spoke with my Uncle John the other day. When you answer a call from him your hello is followed by a scratchy, “Yeahp.” It’s not a yeah and not a yep. It’s yeahp. When we hear this we all know who it is, “Hey, Uncle John.”

He was calling to thank me for my Christmas card. Not a big fan of answering machines and leaving messages, he’d been trying to reach me for weeks, but never left a message. He told my mom, “She’s got some sort of African drums on her machine. It scared me half to death the first time I heard it. Nearly fell out of my seat.” That’s John. He speaks mainly in incomplete sentences, but you know exactly where he’s coming from.

Well, he finally left a message and I called him back. He said a lot of sensible things in the half hour I talked with him.

On the movies:

“I don’t go to the movies. The last time I went to the movies was in the 70s. It’s completely ridiculous. You jump up. You sit down. People climbing over you and popcorn and soda spilled on you. It’s worse than an airplane. Getting herded around like a bunch of cattle. Nah, I like a more peaceful life.” As he told me this he could hardly hear me because his cable cooking show was on so loud.

On the movies and sin and a few other tangential topics:

My grandparents “became” Christians as young adults and they adhered to a lot of rules and regulations when they had children. They softened as they grew older. My cousin Michelle, John’s stepdaughter, said at my grandmother’s funeral that my mom and her siblings grew up with a lot of rules, but that once the grandkids came along that all we experienced was “grace and mercy”. So true, their faith grew.

Well, anyway, John remembers when all things were sinful. You just couldn’t measure up, “Movies? That was a sin. Movies and ball games. Sunday you didn’t do nothing but go to church and milk the cow.” Presumably Sunday was the day some (sinful) farmers took in a movie and went to ballgames. “The movie theater was a den of iniquity. Getting caught at the movies was almost like a life sentence. You were done for. Alan and I got pissed off and didn’t listen to that bullshit. We’d combine when everyone went to church. Bushel a whole bunch. When they all came home from church he’d [Grandpa Art] wouldn’t say nothing because we made him a lot of money.”

Those inconsistencies on Grandpa’s sin theology still don’t make sense to him.

On Mom:

“She’s either crying or screaming.”

On Dad’s weight loss:

“What’d he go on some crash diet? If you like to be skinny that’s the way to do it. I thought he was ready to collapse. He’s ash gray. Got no color. He had to stand in one place twice before I could see him.”

That’s Uncle John. You should give him a call. You’d learn a lot about the VA hospital (“they take good care of me”) and getting kicked out of Christian schools and how much he loves his grandkids. He’s alright.