My Uncle was a seriously serious person. I never really had a conversation with him until I was an adult. We just didn’t have too much in common. He did call me princess, but I always had the feeling that it was because he couldn’t remember my name.

But he still is the source of a few gut busting stories. I think that a lot of it has to do with his absent-mindedness. There was the time, for instance, when he bought a new car. It was a convertible and it was also the first time that he had a car with a radio and a cigarette lighter. He was thrilled. He headed out on the highway.

He had the top down. It was a sunny warm day. He turned on the radio. Then, he decided to have a smoke. He pushed in the lighter, it clicked right on time. He lifted it up and lit the ciggie. Ah, come on, you know what happened next. Don’t make me tell you. Oh, okay. Yes, he threw it right out the window as if it were a used match.

This is such a visual story. I can see it in my mind’s eye every time I tell it. Those are the best kinds of stories, the visual ones. Just picturing my uncle’s face, smiling happily tossing that lighter out of the car and not even realizing it for another 10 miles warms the cockles of my twisted little heart. But there’s another story that’s even better.

Uncle was heading home one night. He was living near the ocean at the time. As he turned down the coast road, fog enveloped his car. He couldn’t see more than a few feet beyond the front of his car. Just then, he noticed a set of tail lights in front of him. “Ah, if I follow the tail lights, maybe he knows where he’s going,” thought Uncle. He assumed the driver was male. I suppose that made it better than following a woman. Who knows?

It goes without saying that the 2 cars were going at about 5 miles per hour. As his car crept through the pea soup, Uncle felt pretty good about his decision to follow this car. The car in front seemed to be following a tried and true path.

After about 45 minutes, the 2 car parade veered off to the left, and then to the left again. The car in front stopped. Luckily the slow speed allowed Uncle to stop without incident. Then, all hell broke loose.

It turned out that Uncle had followed the car right into its driveway. The man whose car it was, (yes, it was a man) jumped out of his vehicle and came back to find out who this idiot was who had followed him all the way home. “What the hell are you up to?” he demanded. Uncle shamefacedly admitted what he had done. The fellow pulled the car door opened and pulled Uncle out. “You asshole!” he yelled as he decked Uncle.

Mopping the blood off his broken nose, Uncle was about to ask directions but decided against it. He apologised and got back in his car. He pulled out of the driveway and drove up the street. When he got to what looked like a corner, he parked the car and turned off the engine. He climbed into the back set and, pulling his coat over him, went to sleep.

When he woke up the next morning, the fog had lifted. He could see that he was in a neighbourhood that looked familiar. As he climbed back into the front seat, he adjusted the mirror to check his face. He had a black eye and his nose was going in another direction than it had been the evening before. Then, he looked at the street sign: he was about 2 blocks from home.

He called in sick to work that day.