JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT YOUR KNEECAPS WERE SAFE...

Gawd.

Yesterday had its share of nightmares, lemme tell ya.

Seriously.

Lemme tell ya.

I wouldn't be opening up the entry with it if I wasn't about to tell ya.

Jeez Louise.

Okay...at church, it was Youth Sunday.

What does this mean?

Wellll, my little pinheaded friend...it means that the teens of the church run the show. They get up there and do it all while the adults sit back and snooze.

It was MY job as official church videographer, to videotape the entire service. So that these children's parents will have a video memory of a time when their children seemed like little angels instead of knocked-up at 17 and living with their boyfriend in a beat-up shack.

So I get there and set all my stuff up. The service starts and I'm fucking Steven Spielberg, man. I'm getting all kindsa crazy dope camera angles and going from black and white to color to black and white again and stuff like that. When I shoot church videos, I like to make sure that not only the family can enjoy the videos...but also any acid freaks that may happen to wander into a room showing the videos.

"Dude...that guy on the cross looks like he's melting..."

"Thanks. I did that with a fish eye lens."

So anyway...I'm rocking on the videocam and am about 25 minutes into the service when a little yellow videotape starts blinking in the window that I'm watching it through.

I have five minutes of tape left.

Oh shit.

I REALLY need to start checking to see if tapes are blank before I just zip over to church and start videotaping things.

So I go to my trusty camcorder bag to get another...get another...get...

....oh shit shit.

No tape.

So I flip out in the back of the church, which isn't easy to do successfully. A good flip out consists of screaming, cussing and throwing things.

I stood there silently and kept giving the kids the "hurry up!" signs with my hands. Apparently, the "Hurry up!" sign isn't in service any longer, because the kids just stared at me like I was an epileptic requesting a spoon shoved in my mouth to avoid biting my tongue off.

...Which I guess my "Hurry up!" movements could have signified. They're basically one and the same.

I shut off the camera and got my wits about me.

Did I mention that every time the camera is either turned on or off, a chime rings that sounds like a doorbell? No??

Well it does.

And it sounds REALLY loud when it's done inside church.

Susie recognized the sound immediately. She was sitting in the first row of the church. When she heard the doorbell, her head whipped around like a sheet in the wind.

"I'M OUT OF TAPE!" I mouthed, while pointing at the camera.

The look of fury on her face said it all. I was in some pretty deep shit.

For the next 30 minutes, each child got a little time on the tape.

VERY LITTLE time.

It's like a montage of the kids that doesn't make any sense whatsoever. I've gotta admit...I was kinda amused when I came home and watched it yesterday afternoon.

Then again...I didn't have a kid in the program who had worked his ass off and just wanted his efforts to be caught on videotape to be preserved forever but instead got a five second blip of his kid saying "And then the Lord said Eat my...." before the video shifts to another kid.

I felt like crap afterwards.

I had to go up to the woman who spearheaded the whole event and tell her I didn't catch it all on tape.

"Well, how much did you get?" she asked.

"Ummmmm...the first 25 minutes when y'all didn't do anything? I got all that"

She thought for a moment and then said "That's okay. We're doing it at Blah Blah Blah Church next Sunday. You can come and tape that service."

Oh.

Great.

As if watching these kids do this thing once wasn't bad enough, now I've got to go to a different church and watch it again.

Wonderful.

Thanks God.

Thanks for not telling me there wasn't much tape left in the camcorder.

I appreciate it.

Oh sure...I know...you've got bigger fish to fry out there, what with Saddamma bin Khadaffi acting like a real ass.

But ummm...next time can you watch out for your old buddy Uncle Bob?

You know...maybe a sign or something that there's not enough videotape left BEFORE I get to the church?

Thanks.

We're still cool.

But seriously...you're supposed to be watching out for me.

You're beginning to slack off a bit.

Get with the program.

Last night, the phone rings.

It's Susie's sister in Fort Worth. Just as we're ready to eat dinner.

I sit down at the table and begin eating because if it's Susie's sister, I can expect her to be on the phone for at LEAST 20 minutes.

NINETY FREAKIN' MINUTES LATER, Susie gets off the phone.

"Well, do you want to know the latest?"

I knew what it was...my knee-humping nephews from Texas were coming to town to ruin my Christmas holidays. I would have six houseguests staying with me from Christmas Eve until the day after New Years Day. By day two, after several fun-filled hours of wrapping themselves around my legs and dry-humping my knees like they were Britney Spears, the boys would begin to stink that stench that teenage boys get when they don't bathe for a week and then start complaining that all of my Play Station games are two years old or older and I suck as an Uncle and why can't we get on the computer and surf for porn and why can't we watch R-rated movies on the DVD player and where are the other seven in-laws and Pepe? They should have been here by now. We need more noise in this house and we need it now. Somebody promised me that Pepe was going to be here and dammit, I need some pointers on how to dig out of a prison with a rusted spoon and a book of matches.

Well yes...they're coming.

And ummmmmm...they're bringing two extra people with them.

Bringing a grand total of eight people staying here for a week during the holidays.

The two extra people???

My oldest nephew Brian's girlfriend, Tara.

Annnnnnnnnd....their six-week-old baby boy, Dylan.

Yep...my nephew is now a father.

He's 19 years old and his old lady is 17. Neither one of them knew she was pregnant. Apparently, the lack of menstrual cycles and bulbous stomach weren't strong enough clues for either of them.

The baby was born September 7th. Tara went to the hospital to have the baby and her mother called my sister-in-law to tell her that her son was about to become a father.

Sandy, Susie's sister, went on a search for Brian, our nephew, to tell him this. She found him at a friend's house. When she told him that his girlfriend was in the hospital having a baby, his face went white.

"I thought she was just gaining weight and didn't want to say anything," he said.

So Tara has the baby and then goes home to her alcoholic mother, who promptly kicks "the slut" out on the streets with her new baby boy.

Tara tried to take her belongings and the mother said that she could either take the baby or take her belongings...but not both.

She took the baby and headed over to my in-laws house.

They took her in. Sandy took her to Walmart and bought her two outfits so now she has three things she can wear.

The baby has next to nothing. A few things to wear and some formula. He sleeps on a fold-out bed with Brian in the living room, while Tara sleeps in Brian's room.

Yes, the mother and father are forbidden to sleep with one another since they're not married. I dunno...to me that cracked me up.

So now...my brother in law is not only supporting his four boys and wife...he's got two more mouths to feed on his paycheck.

Because Brian is a bag boy at the local grocery store, but only does that part-time. No full-time bagging for this kool kat. Uh-uh. I've got school to finish. I ain't got no time to be out bagging groceries when I could be learning to be an airplane mechanic or something.

I think that's what attracted Tara to Brian...his bagging skills. I bet he doesn't even have to ask people "paper or plastic" because he's so good and studly, he can probably just look at a person and tell if they're a paper or plastic person. It's a skill that you can't learn...you're born with it, baybee.

Oooo. It makes me all gooey just thinking about such a bagging stud.

So Brian now has to sign those bagboy checks over to his parents instead of going out and paying derelicts to buy him beer to get his underaged girlfriend drunk so he can get in her pants.

Those days are over, pal. You're a daddy now.

What REALLY sucks is that this takes the limelight off of Andrew in the family. We were kinda hoping he would be the baby for a while and get all the attention.

Now we've got another kid sucking up that spotlight.

...And Andy's not happy about it either.

But, as I told Susie...this predicament of Andy not being the youngest won't last long.

Because this mother is 17. She hasn't sown her wild oats...she fell in love with a bag boy and had a baby. In five years, she'll be resentful and more than likely take that baby, move to California and start doing porno movies and get hooked on crank and die at the age of 25, leaving Baby Dylan to one of her co-stars to raise.

Brian will be out of the picture, off of the hook and out there trying to seduce some new high school honey with his bagging techniques.

In the meantime, they're all coming to stay with us this Christmas because somewhere in their warped assed minds, they think we all want to see the little bastard and have him stay with us for ten days.

Ummmmm...sorry. We're just NOW getting Andy to sleep through the night. If you THINK that we want to give up ten nights of rest after not having any for a year to sit and stare at a baby who won't even be a part of this family in five years, you're wrong. Dead wrong.

Susie's sending a package of Andrew's old clothes to these kids and some old toys as well.

Gawd.

Just when I thought that I'd never have my knee humped again...the King of the Knee Humpers goes and has a little boy of his own to hump his Great Uncle Bob.

Sheesh.

Time to buy more knee pads.