Barbie Doll Chicken

My 15 year old nephew has been staying with us for a few days and I have been trying to keep him amused. I'm uncertain about what he thinks of me even though I've been trying very hard, maybe too hard to be cool...

Last Wednesday I picked him up at the station and decided to show him round town. We were walking round the shops when I came upon a trendy card shop. I love card shops and I really enjoy reading funny and inappropriate greetings cards and the more toilet humour in them the better. I have a couple of friends who share my card habit and we like nothing more than to stand in Clinton Cards laughing till tears run down our faces. So there I was in this particular shop perusing the cards and having a jolly good laugh.  I had found a really hilarious card and without thinking I gave it to my nephew. "Just look at this one!" I said, regretting it as the words left my mouth. His face was a mask of uncomprehending horror, how could his Aunt do this to him, how embarrassing could she be?  I realized that I had made a BIG mistake...this was not cool, I was acting like the15 year old teenager giggling in the card shop and he was the adult!

Mistake two was on Friday. I had cooked chickens for dinner and noted, while cleaning them that they were a bit deformed. They had huge breasts with tiny little spindly thighs and legs and they looked as if they had been given silicon implants. Actually I think they must get injected with some kind of hormones to give them big juicy breasts, which isn't really fair because in our family we like dark chicken and I would much rather have a chicken with big juicy thighs and small breasts.

We had guests for dinner including my best friend and her husband. Now my best friend is one of my greetings card shop buddies and we share the same sense of humour. A few years ago we went to see the film Johnny English  with our kids and laughed so hard and so loud that our kids moved to the other side of the cinema in order to distance themselves from us. Anyway, back to Friday night and I was serving the chicken. My friends are breast people and I commented that they happened to be particularly large that evening, I said, "Do you know these chickens look like Barbie Dolls, they have huge boobs and tiny little thighs." My friend fell about laughing and my 15 year old nephew looked at me with disdain and horror..again!

My mother- in -law has made it an art to be embarrassing in public, she thinks nothing of repeating the rude jokes that her niece emails to her, no matter who the company is! I think she does it because she doesn't want to disappear. I don't blame her, I can see how easy it is to just drift into being old and becoming grayer and grayer until you blend in with the walls. She is saying "I'm still here, don't ignore me!" I really admire her despite sometimes being excruciatingly embarrassed by her, she is fighting old age like a tiger.

So I'm going to keep giggling in card shops, snorting in cinemas and making remarks about chickens' anatomies and who cares if it's not cool!