Paper’s Thinner than Blood and Water

They say you can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family. First off, I’m adopted so I happen to know that this is a blatant lie, and even when you can’t choose your family, you CAN choose to not open the door when you see that it’s them knocking. For the past few weeks my Uncle Joel and my 5-year old cousin… Joel have been visiting from Alaska. Relatives are to my home what rock stars are to a hotel room: late hours, loud music, empty bottles (both beer and baby), and Transformers toys everywhere. The only difference is that every time rock stars step outside of their hotels tons of screaming girls show up to toss themselves at the band. Whenever my uncle and cousin leave, the only screaming woman who shows up is my mom yelling at me about how the house it so messy. Because yeah Mom, clearly the The Hulk  action figure which is missing an arm and covered in pop tarts belongs to me. Idiot. I hate pop tarts! Plus, everyone knows I keep all of my action figures in their packages.

Among the rest of the toys my cousin has left behind, there is also a black Cadillac Escalade. As someone who doesn’t really know car culture and usually thinks like a child himself, I could not understand why a 5-year old kid would want to play with a toy model of a car that actually exists. That seems so boring and unimaginative. When I was a kid, the cars and other vehicles I played with reflected what I thought was fun and were idealized representations of what I wanted to be: racecars, rocket ships, flying DeLoreans, and my personal favorite from Hot Wheels… the Hot Seat.

None of these were things I actually encountered on the street though. So whereas I had aspirations to be an astronaut or a time traveler, he has dreams of being a drug dea-- hip hop star. Now I realize this may seem somewhat judgmental of me, but I like the idea of a world where ill-fitting clothing is seen as problematic…

...as opposed to preferential.

Fun Fact: Despite the very uncharacteristically wing-like pose this man sports in this photo, nobody calls him chicken. 

Just so everyone knows the score, the guy who actually rolls up his ill-fitting sleeves not only has a self-fitting, self-drying jacket that talks like Stephen Freaking Hawking but he also drives a car which flies, is powered by recycled cans and trash, and time travels. I'll let you judge for yourself how gangsta the set of wheels these low riders are scratching their heads over is. Hint: Where they're going, they TOTALLY need roads.