Life > November 29, 2007

By Austin H. Jones | Staff columnist

After the nine-hour drive from Wake to my tiny hometown in the middle of nowhere, the only thing I wanted to do was sleep. But as I lugged my bag of dirty clothes up to my room, my mom called to me, reminding me of something that I had previously been pushing to the recesses of my mind.

This knowledge was the proverbial pot of too-steeped tea, chillin’ on the back burner with the overdone pasta that was my finals schedule and also with the boiled-over lima beans that were all of my over-commitments from this semester that I am now trying to ignore. Anyway, this issue was the most heavily ignored of the potfuls of issues cooking on the stove of my life.

Uncle Hugh was staying in my room. Of course, I knew that he was coming well in advance – he comes every Thanksgiving and stays with us Wednesday and Thursday nights and is gone before sunrise on Friday. But, as I said before, I had been suppressing the realization that Hugh would be coming, so it took me by surprise, bringing about a massive wave of despair that hit me like a laundry machine dropped by ninjas from the top of Big Ben. How could I be so anxious about someone I’m related to living with me?

Uncle Hugh is not actually my uncle. In fact, no one in my family can tell me how or when or where he first became an honorary family member. All I get as a response is, “Hugh’s a family friend. He always has been.” Hugh is 55-years old, and the only hair he has left is the kind that sits on top of his ears, its stubborn resistance to baldness accentuated by the sheen of his waxy head. He has an obtrusive, Confederate-general-style moustache which he trims right before Thanksgiving dinner.

I would normally prefer it trimmed up, except that Hugh leaves his thick, grayish clippings crawling all over my smooth, white bathroom counter. He has worn the same khaki windbreaker (covered in stains of every color, taste and age, with some up to 20 years old I’m sure) to every meal for as long as I can remember. He never takes it off. I’m not sure if he even owns any other clothes. Doesn’t matter if it’s warm, cold, sunny or raining – he wears that jacket. At dinner, the only time he speaks is to ask – nay, to tell – one of us to pass the cranberry sauce or the salt ‘n’ pepper.

One time, Hugh stood up, walked over to the refrigerator, grabbed a bottle of hot sauce, and poured a full half of it on the turkey and stuffing lovingly prepared by my mother. Hugh (pronounced as Larry David does) has never even once thanked my family for hosting him. He eats and leaves, destroying any chance of gratitude on his part by calling a cab to take him to the airport to fly him back to his mysteriously unknown hometown. I despise Hugh, the ingrate, for being the epitome of America’s treatment of Thanksgiving.

And I feel sorry for those of Hugh who embody this unappreciative, all-consuming creature of selfishness as well.