Ranking
I moved to Texas from California just about the same time my friend David did the same, and we commiserated frequently that first homesick year over something David had been told as a young man: "If you manage to go through life without living in Florida or Texas, you win." Well, we'd half lost already, but there's extra West Coast snobbery against Florida, as it is the place New Yorkers go to die, and Californians have to resent that association with NYC as well. So we congratulated ourselves (probably delusionally) on choosing the lesser of two evils.
All of that coast-ist language is in there to explain how I moved up in the cousins rankings this week. See, my grandmother comes from an immigrant family of 11 children, and while they try to be subtle, she and her siblings talk a lot, and the favorite topic is the grandchildren. The thousands of grandchildren. There is an unofficial ranking of bragging rights, based on education, jobs, success of relationships, and production of great-grandbabies, etc. There is also the fact that these people disseminate information faster than Twitter--the whole family knows all your business at light speed.
Within my age group, I've been neck and neck recently with M the Beautiful and Eddie, as we are all employed college graduates who disappointed the family solely by moving far away and not producing grandbabies, and I was lower in the ranks due to geographic location, me in Texas, the boys in New York. I was clearly behind Eddie in western NY, and I thought I had the edge over M in NYC, but apparently that's personal bias against the city, everybody else thinks it's sophisticated and edgy or something, plus he's cohabiting with K the Also Beautiful, who the grandparents agree would make lovely grandbabies. So it was M, Eddie, me.
But Eddie took a job in Jacksonville last week.
You may be 6'4" and talented and gorgeous, my darling cousin, but Texas wins this round.
All of that coast-ist language is in there to explain how I moved up in the cousins rankings this week. See, my grandmother comes from an immigrant family of 11 children, and while they try to be subtle, she and her siblings talk a lot, and the favorite topic is the grandchildren. The thousands of grandchildren. There is an unofficial ranking of bragging rights, based on education, jobs, success of relationships, and production of great-grandbabies, etc. There is also the fact that these people disseminate information faster than Twitter--the whole family knows all your business at light speed.
Within my age group, I've been neck and neck recently with M the Beautiful and Eddie, as we are all employed college graduates who disappointed the family solely by moving far away and not producing grandbabies, and I was lower in the ranks due to geographic location, me in Texas, the boys in New York. I was clearly behind Eddie in western NY, and I thought I had the edge over M in NYC, but apparently that's personal bias against the city, everybody else thinks it's sophisticated and edgy or something, plus he's cohabiting with K the Also Beautiful, who the grandparents agree would make lovely grandbabies. So it was M, Eddie, me.
But Eddie took a job in Jacksonville last week.
You may be 6'4" and talented and gorgeous, my darling cousin, but Texas wins this round.