“Uncle Max, I am cursed. God has destined me to be surrounded by idiots.”
For such a bright young woman, my niece had a hard time remembering about the relationships of different time zones in the US.
“Daisy, I’m sure you’ve already had breakfast, but it’s only 6:00 in the morning here.”
“Yes, I have had breakfast, thanks for asking.” She took a breath and recharged her tirade. “So I had to go to this weekend conference for this class I’m taking, and they threw me into a room that I had to share with three other girls. THREE, Uncle Max. It was at some camp or retreat place or something, and there were two bunk beds in each room. These girls were freaks. I mean FREAKS.”
Daisy’s voice hit an emphasizing pitch that almost slipped past the borderline of my ability to hear sound.
“What do mean that they were freaks?”
“You won’t believe it, Uncle Max. First, they were all nerds and couldn’t even engage in a meaningful conversation. It was one-word responses to everything I asked them. I finally gave up. Second, they were all completely bizarre. One girl had a moustache—you know, like the peach fuzz that girls have, except multiplied by, like, a million. The other girl had about eight whiskers on her chin that looked like they could poke out your eye if you got too close.”
“Did they work at the circus?”
“No, they go to school, like me. Oh, wait. That was a joke, right?”
My dear niece was more of a nerd than she wanted to admit. We often despise those things that remind us of ourselves.
“Right. But please continue. This is fascinating.”
“I thought you’d like it. You could write an article about it, and no one would believe it. Anyway, the third girl was all proud of herself because she said she didn’t believe in God, which I could have cared less about anyway, but she thought it was a big deal so when she actually talked, it was about that. On top of that, she had all these demands about space in the room because she can’t stand feeling closed in.”
“So, Daisy, you roomed with two girls sporting bizarre facial hair, and one who was a claustrophobic atheist.”
“You got it. I’m telling you, Uncle Max, you can’t make this stuff up.”
I thought about how this could be the set up for a really bad joke, but couldn’t bring myself to make light of this event that had so traumatized poor Daisy.
“Anyway, I just needed to tell someone. Thanks for listening, Uncle Max.”
I ended the call and decided to get up. I thought I might get to The End of Time early, have coffee, and figure out how to write about Daisy’s experience without implicating her or her erstwhile roommates. One should never make fun of women with facial hair.
I also needed some time to consider how I might get Winnie to unleash her own collection of family secrets that she so carefully protected.
