Eating okra is like swallowing someone's tongue. And not in the good way.

I had dinner with some distant relatives last week. They live in a small coastal town in Virginia that puts the ‘Too Fucking Cute By Half’ in ‘quaint.’ Gene, who is about my Dad’s age, had spent the night in the hospital because he was bleeding from an artery and the docs couldn’t stop it. Ack-shully, the docs said life’s a bitch and sent him home to bleed out, but Marie, his wife, said like hell and she packed him back in the car and drove him to the ER. A nurse applied pressure to the wound for a minute and the bleeding stopped. When I turn 60 I’m going to take my attorney with me everywhere I go.

There were seven of us: Gene (who sat around looking pale and interesting all night), Marie, Spencer their 13 year-old grandson, my parents, my brother and yours truly. We were sitting around this ancient oak table eating fried chicken, Carolina-style BBQ and hush puppies when the topic of discussion turned to the world going to shit. I mentioned how DC is going through a murder wave. You can’t shut my brother the fuck up for a minute, and he held forth on how killing people was just wrong. He was mostly playing to the 13 year old, but wanted to please the geezers by coming off soundly on the side of law and order while letting the kid know that he was hip. He sounded exactly like Tommy Chong having a Conjunction Junction moment. “Killing people is bad, man. Especially cops. Killing cops is reeelly bad, man.”

My brother is usually everybody’s darling but this time he blew it. Everyone at the table stopped and stared at him like he was having some sort of attack, or at least like he had farted and laughed. ‘Oh yes? How interesting. I’ve never thought about it before but I suppose capping a police officer would cause a lot of problems. Pass the mashed potatoes.’ I just snorted and shook my head. On the way home he got back at me by telling mom that the way she was driving was scaring the hell out of me.