"No, I can't talk to Selena right now. My nipples are hard."

If you haven't heard already, my family is nuts. All of them. Even the ones who, until tonight, I had never met.

Tonight I went to a dinner party at my great aunt Lillian's house. Lil is a writer extraordinaire, and one of the great anomalies of our family, but then again, we're all a bit strange.

You see, I really don't consider myself to be much of a Holland, even though it's my name. I'm really a Penton (my mother's family) and a Bouzane (my grandmother's family). For one, those are the people I grew up around as being my family, and two, the Holland part of my family can be a bit dull.

So anyway, my aunt Lil, my grandmother's sister, had a party with a lot of my extended family there. I finally met my uncle Jim (who is actually my great uncle, my grandmother's brother, but in this family great uncles are uncles, and even your 3rd cousin is your cousin, because they look just like you anyway), and my mother's cousins, and all those people that I've heard stories about but had never met. You'd know their face in a crowd of a thousand anyway. Interestingly enough, my pilot on my flight on the way home was some guy named Maurice Penton, and he looked just like my cousin Steve. So there we are.

Newfoundland is probably one of the only places left in the world where you'll find your distant relatives and still know they're yours. Which reminds me: If two people on Fogo Island get divorced, are they still brother and sister?
(That's a joke, by the way.)

Speaking of jokes, my family is dort. My uncle Ray, the lesbian thespian (that's a new moniker he got tonight), told some wonderful jokes tonight leftover from the days of Codco. and Fresh Fish (which, if you haven't seen, you should definitely try to find copies somewhere. Newfoundland humour is more than just Buddy Wassisname. And I get to say that without gall because Kevin Blackmore is an old family friend. My family has a link to everyone, and again, Newfoundland is the last place on Earth where that's possible).
Anyways, after discussing Christmas Beatings, telling a million confessional jokes (de Ire-ish Cat'lics, y'know?) and why shit is the "best" word in the dictionary (and why soggy wad is the worst combination of words ever, thanks to Cheryl for figuring that out), it all came down to this sketch that Ray and and an friend of his named Wade used to do with the Avion Players in Gander. When Brain Peckford, the born-again bayman, was premier, Ray and Wade did a skit about how Peckford wanted to re-write all the classics of literature in The Newfoundland Dialect, to put it politely, so that all Newfoundlanders could appreciate them. He decided to start with Shakespeare. So Ray would, in a very posh British accent, read: O Romeo! Romeo! Wherefore art thou, Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name! Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, and I'll no longer be a Capulet. And Wade would "translate": "Romeo! Sure, Romeo, b'y! Where are ya?" "I's down 'ere, fer Christ's sake!" "Sure, come up 'ere now, me duck, and we'll get into some som'thin (winks), now luh!"

And Ray would say: "Et tu, Brute? Then fall, Caesar!"

And Wade would say: "Brutus b'y, you're some prick! Yah friggin' had to stab me, wha? I's gunna friggin' die now!"

Hilarious!

Of course, my humour of my family is often best when shared with outside parties. Earlier in the night, Ray was doing an impression of Andy Jones, a Newfoundland comic of several years ago (who, incidentally, has said if there ever was a movie about him, he would want Ray to play him), who used to do a skit where he played Wade (no relation to the perviously mentioned one), a guy whose stories always ended with women getting their chests soaked in oil. (I don't know, don't ask).

I also don't think I can do the joke justice here, as it has a lot to do with the delivery. (Haha, left you hanging. I promise if you ask me to do it though, I'll do it in person.)
Anyways, it involved a lot of chest rubbing. At the end of the joke, much goaded by Aunt Lil, Ray exclaims that his nipples are hard. In other families, I'm sure, this kind of exclaimation at the dinner table would be met with shock and disgust. To the Pentons and Bouzanes, this is the height of hilarity. Then again, we're not a normal group.

So later I duck into the study to call Selena, and Ray comes in to badger me. I ask him if he'd like to say hello to Selena (they've met before, and there was an incident of drink tickets stuck to the forehead, but that's a story for another time). And he says, "Oh no, I can't talk to Selena. My nipples are hard."

Merry Old Christmas Eve, everybody!

Rebecca