well, aren't you just full of stories

When I hear that my Uncle Mario is coming over with the kids, I get slightly annoyed. I probably shouldn't, but I can't help it.

I guess I have become somewhat possessive of Sunday dinner at my parent's. Or maybe it's just the dread that comes with having to endure someone talking about their kids all night long. I believe he's been over three or four times since he got out. I know it makes my mother and her mother super happym so I would never dream of saying anything. Just me being selfish.

But yesterday just ended up being a really fun night. A pleasant suprise.

Say what you will about the black sheep of the clan, the truth is that Uncle Mario can be extremely likeable when he puts his mind to it. He knows it. And we know it.

I think it's got a lot to do with his storyteller's charm, which he gets directly from my Nonna. They both have stunning long-term memory and an eye for detail. I have seen both stop in the middle of a story, lift up their sleeves and expose the goosebumps on their forearms - if only to prove just how powerful what they're recounting is. "See what I'm talking about?" I ask my father after my Uncle finishes the story about the old 'witch' (actually one of his Aunts from back in Cairano) and how she cooked her pasta from a giant cauldron with flies all around it. "You don't have to have a photographic memory to remember those details - just a good visual one." Shit, I visited that very same aunt in that very same dingy cave and probably ate that very same meal and I couldn't pick her out of a witch lineup if my life depended on it. My brother probably could. My father nods and I assume he understands the difference now. Our memories stink by comparison. "Yeah, but we got the logic," he assures me matter-of-factly. Perfect.

So while my father entertained the kids with number tricks based on simple algebra, my Uncle Mario
recounted the now infamous story about how he almost drowned my teenage mother after dragging her rubber raft out into the Nassau ocean. A practical joke almost gone terribly wrong.


It was fun to hear about my Uncle Sal and the crazy fishing/hunting trips trips he dragged his younger brother on back in the day. How they rode trains that dropped them deep in the bush and waited to board Cessnas piloted by drunk Natives. How he left my thirteen-year old Uncle Mario in the middle of the woods holding a loaded shotgun with clear instructions to shoot and then actually pretended he was the Moose - cracking branches with his hands - just to fuck with him.

But that one image of my Uncle Sal leaning back on his side of the canoe with nothing but a pair of shorts, his fishing rod and a cigarette hanging from his mouth while an all-but mummified Mario crumpled under the swarm of black flies and the pounding sun on the other was the killer.

In a different time and place, that would have been my brother and I. And I suddenly understood a little more about both my uncles and the power that comes with being the older brother.