Turns out she signed me up for some big lesbian sock exchange. And I'm not even a lesbian. The letter was so long with all these detailed instructions that I just read the first few lines and then chucked it back in the mailbox to finish reading later. I have a habit of doing that with my mail. If I open it up and it doesn't look good to me then I just chuck it back in so I'll know right where it is later, when I'm more in the mood to read whatever it is.
According to the letter, my name and address have been shipped to various lesbians in the Eugene/Springfield area and soon I will be the recipient of 36 pairs of socks to "jazz up" my wardrobe.
Thirty-six pairs of socks! I only live in a studio apartment; I dont have room for 36 pairs of socks lesbian or otherwise!
My aunt seems to be making some last ditch effort to get me to switch sides by trying to lure me with colorful socks now that my sister has gone off and gotten hitched. It will never work. I just absolutely adore the male physique too much.
I appreciate my aunt and her lesbian, vegan-eating, hemp-wearing, grassroots-political-activism ways, but frankly her socks have always horrified me. Black socks with smiling jack-o-lanterns on Halloween, yellow socks with colorful turkeys for Thanksgiving, red socks with dancing green elves for Christmas, purple socks with green leprechauns for St. Patrick's Day, pink socks with hopping fluffy white Easter bunnies... you get the idea.
I like to keep it simple. I like black Smart Wool walking socks. I own seven pairs of exactly the same sock and do laundry once a week so it works out perfect. Simplicity. Why mess with a good thing?
I asked around the family and no one else received the lesbian sock exchange chain letter. So I decided not to bring it up at our last family gathering a few weekends ago.
Speaking of family get togethers, for some reason every member of my family has spontaneously decided to start wearing Hawaiian attire to any family gathering that coincides with temperatures above 58 degrees. On Mother's Day my mom showed up wearing a green Hawaiian print dress that matched the same material as my stepdad's green Hawaiian print shirt. My grandmother adorned herself and others in large Hawaiian seed necklaces with no explanation.
Maybe my family has always been mesmerized by the tropical breezes floating across the Pacific. I remember when my mother was leading my Brownie Girl Scout troop and we were asked to represent a country at the annual Girl Scout International Festival: we chose Hawaii. In our defense, the Mercator projection maps were still in use in Yamhill County classrooms at that time so we were all under the belief that both Alaska and Hawaii were actually separate island nations located in the Gulf of Mexico, just as they appeared on all of our U.S. maps.
No one ever said anything to us about Hawaii not being its own country so we went ahead and cut the Oregonian into long strips, glued them around some old fishing line and then tied them around our waists to wear as hula skirts (the best use one can get from most of the Oregonian, really) while we danced to my grandmother's old Don Ho record down at the Elk's lodge.
So I guess it shouldn't have been all that surprising to me when I realized a few weekends ago that my family keeps requesting that I make all these tropical desserts featuring pineapple, coconuts and bananas.
In keeping with the spirit of the islands that seems to be sweeping over my family, my aunt announced on Mother's Day that she's been taking ukulele lessons ever since someone stole her banjo. From beneath the Japanese maple trees in my grandparent's yard, she slowly strummed the Turtles' "Happy Together" on the ukulele while my mom hula danced around my stepdad and we all sang along.
I may as well start expanding my repertoire of coconut cream pie, pineapple upside-down cake and banana nut cake recipes. I have a feeling that this whole Hawaiian shirt, hula dancing and ukulele action is here to stay.
