My Only Bitchy Cousin Is A Yankee-type Guy- The... -

I finally snapped at the Christmas Eve dinner when I was seventeen. Bradley had just finished a five-minute monologue about how Southern barbecue was “conceptually inferior to a properly smoked brisket from Kansas City.” He said “conceptually inferior” about my daddy’s pulled pork. My daddy, who had been up since 4 a.m. tending the smoker.

“It’s ‘fewer rolls,’ not ‘less rolls,’ Aunt Patty. Rolls are discrete units.”

That night, after everyone went to bed, I found him on the back porch, looking at the stars. The sky in Georgia is nothing like the sky in Connecticut. He had a beer—a Miller Lite, because he was still a Yankee-Type Guy and couldn’t drink a proper sweet ale to save his life. My Only Bitchy Cousin Is a Yankee-Type Guy- The...

He still corrects my grammar. I still threaten to push him off the dock. But now when he says “It’s ‘fewer’ not ‘less,’” I say, “Bless your heart, Bradley.” And for some reason, that’s become the nicest thing either of us knows how to say.

Aunt Patty, who had just driven four hours through Atlanta traffic, looked like she was considering using those discrete units to commit a felony. I finally snapped at the Christmas Eve dinner

He snorted. “And you’re a menace.”

The room went quiet. My mother put her hand on my arm. Bradley just looked at me for a long moment. Then he did something I’d never seen him do. tending the smoker

He shrieked—a high, pure sound like a teakettle—and flailed in the murky water for a full thirty seconds before realizing he was standing in three feet of it. He marched up the boat ramp, dripping wet, khaki shorts now translucent, and announced to the entire family that I was “a menace to civilized society.”