The Tribe

Last week it was my brother's oldest kid's birthday.

And Good Friday was my stepdad's birthday.

And tonight I got Easter Dinner with my brother's wife's family at their house.

And a couple days from now I think I'm supposed to go the Aquarium and play bodyguard fer my aging momma and my brother's tiny kids.

And then its my little brother's birthday weekend.

And then its my birthday weekend (we were born exactly one week shy of two years apart).

And then its my brother's daughter's birthday the weekend after that (ugh they just keep tacking them on to the end now that they've filled in the middle ahaha).

And there's prolly another frickin' holiday mixed in there somewhere, like frickin' mother's day or something, although I'm so tired already that I don't even wanna look heh.

And then I know there's my mom's birthday right after that.

Everytime I get into the middle of this mess, I always think about how I'm one of a pitifully small handful of people on the internet that doesn't seem like he's some kinda cheap ass stereotypical orphan robot superhero scientist with no family or some shit.

But I also know that there's a lot of folks that ain't as lucky as I am (although most of ya ain't got even ten percent of the scar tissue I got, either).

'Cause some folks got family that ain't no good fer 'em.

And even worse, some folks got family that just pretends they love 'em, 'cause they're supposed to.

And some folks, like my buddy Linst, really are orphans.

And when you ain't never had nobody that you could actually trust with your life, better than you can trust yourself, even if its just for a little while before fate conspires to rip 'em away from you, if you never get to experience that warm and loving intelligent place that you can come from, like I do, 'cause I'm the Wild Bad One where I come from, y'know, well, that's a steady diet of some pretty cold, hard, and nasty shit.

So I guess I shouldn't complain.

And I guess I should cut people some slack.

And I do, now that I think about it.

Not a lot of slack, though, y'know, just some.

'Cause it ain't really luck and money and stuff that makes shit the way it is.

Its just us.

And we can make our shit any way we wanna make it, good shit or bad shit.

And just 'cause its artficial don't mean its fake.

Just like stuff that's all-natural ain't necessarily any good.

So to all you guys who got the big tribes fulla loving folks and tables fulla food and stuff tonight, I hope y'all have a good time, and don't feel guilty, 'cause you know you earned it.

And to all you guys who ain't got that, I wish you luck.

'Cause you can smoke 'em if you got 'em, but if you ain't got 'em, then you gotta make 'em.

And don't let anybody tell you that you can't.

Heck, if you are one of the guys that have to make it first, you'll probably appreciate it a lot more.

As for me, I'm the bastard son of a Vietnam Marine orphan from New York who beat the shit outta me every day until I was made out of iron, son of a woman with parents who hated her because she was so gentle, and they hated me even more, sometimes, although they actually liked the way I was made out of iron, 'cause gramps was an interrogator for CIA (actually the CIS, 'cause it was a Service before it became an Agency) and his wife was even tougher than he was, she totally wore him to shreds, y'know, so they were lotsa fun fer a hippy lovechild bastard to live with heh.

Yah, even though she told my mom that she hoped I would die when I was born, y'know, old-world curse style, Gramma likes me more than anybody else in the family, 'cause I'm the only one in the family she could never break ahaha.

Yah, she really hates weakness, but she's got her excuses, just like everybody else.

Its a frickin' harsh planet sometimes.

And I'm also the stepson of a relatively famous scientist and college professor with no father and an alchoholic mother who had to work the fry machine at McDonald's to pay his own way through school.

He's the guy that finally set me straight the hard way, y'know, by providing me with an example of a man who wasn't a piece of shit heh.

But I don't think I've ever seen anybody in even the extended family I got nowadays (after we killed off all the bad guys heh) ever share anything but appreciation and understanding, kindness and wisdom and love.

Its been almost twenty years of the good stuff, now.

Yah, that good junk is at least as contagious as the bad shit.

But it is artificial.

Created through artifice.

Just like everything that eventually becomes an artifact.

Just like honor, and being a man (or woman heh) of your word.

Its all whatever you make of it.

And its only as strong as you are.

And I suppose that's why this stuff wears me out so much.

But I ain't complaining.

Okay, I guess I am complaining.

But holy shit, how many birthdays in a row can one family possibly have?

Frickin' A, we need to get some people in the family who don't all get the urge to reproduce at exactly the same goddam time and spread this shit out a little more heh.