Sticks and stones, blood and bones.

I enjoy a hilariously vulgar relationship with my immediate family. Few outsiders are brought into the circle, but when they are, suffice to say they are usually suitably shocked and then endlessly amused. Not only do we curse freely and make frequent use of, um, “colorful” language, but it can come as quite a surprise that our favorite, most persistent refrains involve things like tales of my mom fucking my dad in the ass with a strap-on, or my dad’s graphic (and extremely uncomfortable) descriptions of my mom’s...anatomy.

Yeah. Good times.

My grandmother, however, does not appreciate our banter or collective sense of humor. So when she’s around, we strive to be on our best behavior so as not to make her uncomfortable. (For she once expressed to my mom that she is, in fact, extremely uncomfortable with our antics.) In deference to her, we really do try to tone it down during the times when we’re all together. Like Thanksgiving.

Of course, this is easier said than done. Especially when, like this year, we spend several days together.

So the day after Thanksgiving we’re all in the car, headed out for some “family fun,” and we’re all joking around as usual. Generally, our brand of joking involves non-stop ribbing, most often at the expense of the female members of the crew. But this time, my sister-in-law was hassling me about some thing or other, when before I even knew what was happening I found myself exclaiming, “Yo! Fuck off, bitch!”

I sucked in my breath. We all looked at each other, looked and my grandmother, and then simultaneously burst out laughing. Now, I did feel kind of bad, because I know that my grandmother hates that word. Hates it. Much in the way our president hates poor people. We’re talking all-out loathing and disgust here.

But, lovely woman that she is, when we all collected ourselves my grandmother (who actually has the hearing of a new-born bunny rabbit, by the way) let me off the hook by acting like she hadn’t heard a thing and saying simply, “What?”

So I sighed and said, “Oh nothing.” And our exile in the land of good behavior continued...