SON, KEEP YOUR DISTANCE FROM PINKY

So yesterday, I get a call at work about 10 a.m. from the Mrs., heretofore known as "The Mrs."

The first thing she says is "You're not going to BELIEVE what happened at daycare!!"

Now, it's no secret ... I have an overactive imagination. I pictured my son in the middle of a toddler sex ring or something. Maybe one of the kids was an Iraqi spy. Something like that.

(Iraqi? Iraqui?? Whatever)

Here's the deal. There's five kids at daycare ... Andrew, his best buddy William, his nemesis the fat little bastard Nathan, Nathan's sister Kate and newest kid, 14 month-old Austin.

Austin's daddy drops him off at daycare and as he's leaving says "Oh...Austin got a little sick over the weekend...there's some medicine for him in his bag."

Because you're supposed to tell Miss Robin that she's allowed to give your kid medicine. It's some sort of rule...you HAVE to tell the daycare lady what medicines she can give your kid and what she can't. I told her she's allowed to give Andrew everything short of heroin. The last thing I need is for my son toddling around all whacked out on the white angel, aimlessly scratching his arms and babbling about wanting to dry hump Barney or some shit.

So 30 minutes go by as the kids play and paint or touch each other's genitalia or whatever it is they do there at daycare.

Miss Robin goes to give Austin his medicine.

Are you ready?

The medicine is for ....PINK EYE!!!

For those of you who know nothing about Pink Eye, it's the absolute worst thing a kid can have. It's highly contagious, and is spread by looking at each other. Pink Eye makes your kid's eyes swell up as big as softballs and they bulge out of his head and they get all pink until your kid looks like some bizarre character from Hello Kitty. You have to go out and buy your kid some special apparatus to carry his eyeballs around in because they bulge out so far (something like eight inches from the eye socket for toddlers), that they have to pack the eyeballs into like a mini bra that's wrapped around the head. It takes anywhere from 20-47 years to get over and in the meantime, your kid is labeled a freak of nature by everyone he comes into contact with including his peers and his grandparents who suddenly don't have time to bounce the kid on their lap the way they used to because now all of a sudden, Little Johnny isn't as cute as he used to be with his eyes sagging out of his head like a 90 year-old woman's tits.

So...you know...when your kid's got Pink Eye, it's best to keep them home. In a dark closet. For several decades.

Austin's daddy, the fucking moron, brings his kid to daycare and drops him off like all he's got is some extra snot in his sniffer.

So The Mrs. is telling me all this shit and I'm like "Did Austin look at Andrew?!?"

Apparently, the kids were playing for 30 minutes and when Miss Robin saw what the medicine was for, she quarantined Austin in the root cellar, chained to a wall and had him whipped by midgets for amusement while she tracked down his Daddy and called him a fucking moron, telling him to get over there at once and take his little diseased freak out of their home and to never bring him back again until his eyes were all normal again which would be in 47 years.

Austin's Daddy grunted something about not knowing the severity of the condition.

JEEZUM CROW!!!

I'm no doctor, but as you can tell, I have some pretty extensive knowledge of the disease and my son's NEVER had it.

It's just something every responsible parent knows about.

Obviously Austin's Daddy is about as responsible as a teenager with a bottle of Jack Daniels and a shot glass.

Miss Robin assured The Mrs. that she boiled everything in sight and scrubbed all the children's eyes out with Clorox which is what you're supposed to do every time you think your kid could have been exposed to Pink Eye.

I've never met Austin's Daddy, but you can bet that when I do, I'm going to give him one helluva shove in the chest for exposing my kid to his deformed child.

The nerve!!

From one nightmare to another ... I had to go have dinner at the mother-in-law's house last night.

The only way that the dinner could have been more enjoyable is if she had force fed me dinner up the ass with a fork.

I wasn't supposed to go. I had already cancelled my reservation at Chez Hell by saying that I had "work" to do.

"Work" meaning an evening of eating potato chips crumbs off of my naked chest and watching WWE Raw.

But we're in the market for a dining room table set for the new house and in my infinite wisdom, we've decided to turn to our local buy-sell-trade magazine to hunt a used set down for half the price of a new set.

So we found one that sounded really nice just a few miles from the mother-in-law's shack.

Against my better judgement, I go with Susie to check it out and then grudgingly go have dinner at Grandma's.

We get to the house of the dining room table people and the guy's really nice, introducing his family like we needed to know his four year-old daughter's name. Sorry buddy, we're only here for five minutes and here we are 12 hours later and I've completely forgotten the kid's name already so skip the formalities and show me the table.

He shows us the table. It's a table, six chairs, a china cabinet and a hutch thing.

Immediately, I don't like the looks of it. In the ad it said it was "Well taken care of".

When you read that in an ad, you expect something pretty nice. But it could also mean that somebody asked him "Is the dining room set nice?" and he said "Welllllllll....it's been taken care of" meaning they sprayed some Pledge on the shit and wiped it down once or twice a year.

The tops of the backs of the chairs was all worn off. The only thing I could figure that they had done to them was take a hunting knife and carve wedges out of the tops of the chairs, leaving them splintered and nasty. The whole set looked like something out of the 70s. I can't really explain it, but it looked like it belonged in a bad porno movie and some crack whore should be getting nailed on top of the table while I watch the whole act unfold on a fourth-generation videotape in the privacy of my own home.

You know what I mean.

So we make noises that sound like us mumbling "Welll...we've got your number....we may be giving you a call."

The only way we give them a call again is if every dining room table on the face of the planet bursts into flames except for theirs.

So then we go to Grandma's.

This is a special Monday night dinner because our niece Melissa is going off to college on Thursday and this is her goodbye dinner.

Basically, it's a Thanksgiving feast with a delicious Oscar Mayer turkey from the can.

Canned turkey. Damn. You just cannot go wrong with canned turkey.

Grandma is still pissed with the cable company because they couldn't nail down the time they'd be at her house to the precise minute, so she still doesn't have cable.

Keep in mind, she has no job. She sits around the house all day and plucks dingleberries out of her vast forest of anal hair and makes Anal Hair Pie out of them. This woman does NOTHING all day. It wouldn't kill her to wait on the cable company for an afternoon.

But noooooooo. Grandma's got her pride. She's not about to admit to a cable company that she has the time to sit around and wait on the cable guy all day.

Therefore...no cable.

The best channel reception that they get up on this mountain top is the local Public Broadcasting Network.

So we're all huddled around a TV watching snow with the occasional glimpse of what looks to be a Broadway musical from the 1930s. Everyone knows the music, but nobody can make out which musical it might be, which is eating away at my sister-in-law's brain.

"I know the name of this!" she's crowing. "It's on the tip of my tongue!"

My sister-in-law had a nervous breakdown before she married into the family and was committed to an institution for several years. I've learned to just smile nervously and nod my head whenever she gets obsessive about certain things because there's always the chance that she'll try and bludgeon the whole family to death with a wooden mallet if we don't share her enthusiasm over something as trivial as the name of a bad Broadway musical.

So she's singing along to every song and announcing that she's about to regale us all with the name of the musical so that we can all grin and sigh and say "That's right, Sister-In-Law!! You're just so damned smart when it comes to recognizing musicals and naming them while trying to watch them on a television that's threatening to permanently ruin your eyesight at any given moment!"

Meanwhile, Grandma's trying to get everyone to come fix a plate of food. Since nobody else is brave enough to fly out to the kitchen, I decided to go first.

Let me start by saying I have never liked Thanksgiving dinner. Dressing/Stuffing makes me vomit. Literally. I think it's the sage or something. Plus, the thought of eating mushy bread just makes my stomach swell up in my throat. I don't do casseroles. I'm not a big fan of turkey. I only eat instant mashed potatoes. You can hang on to your gravy. And as popular as it may be at my in-laws' gatherings ... I've never really cared for Grandma's Anal Hair Pie.

Anal Hair Cake? Bring it on!

But not Anal Hair Pie.

So I get out there, and there's MAYBE 12 slices of turkey on a platter. I've seen more meat on a vegetarian's plate than she had on this platter.

My brother-in-laws can eat a whole turkey themselves.

So I got a forkful of turkey and put it on my plate.

I put a spoonful of cranberry jello crap on the other side of my plate.

I literally had a spoonful and a forkful of food.

I thought I was going to get away with this. I ran into a darkened corner of the dining room and began gagging the crap down. My little 10 year-old nephew ratted me out.

"Is that all you're going to eat?!?" he yells because everyone in this family yells since they all think that everything they have to say is so gawddamned important.

"I'm not that hungry," I lie with a forced smile, as I catch Grandma's eye. Grandma doesn't trust people who don't eat her food. I've learned that over the years.

"Uncle Bob, you get you a slice of Anal Hair Pie," she cackles, cutting me a slice of the stinky curly dessert.

Thank God for diabetes.

"I can't!" I grinned. "Too much sugar! Got diabetes! Can't eat Anal Hair Pie!"

"Well have some green bean casserole with oysters!"

"I can't! Too many carbs! Got to watch the carbs!"

"How about some fried cat turds?"

"I can't! Can't eat fried food! Got to watch the fried food!"

Grandma had met her match.

So I only had to choke down one bite of her spoiled and rotten canned turkey and a spoonful of rusty cranberry surprise.

Then I sat and secretly pinched Andrew until he cried loud and long and announced that we should be heading back to town.

We left and made it home in time for Andrew to get some play time in before bed.

Andrew has a new fascination with permanent magic markers.

If you happen to leave one within his reach, there's no telling what he'll do.

Last night he really surprised Daddy with his latest creation.

I now have a multi-colored keyboard.

Thanks, son!!

Apparently, the pink eye is affecting his brain.

Because this kid is now old enough for a spanking. And if he keeps drawing on Daddy's computer, he's purchased himself a one-way ticket to Red Ass City.

I ain't playin', Junior.