My Great-Aunt: The Poison Dwarf

Legally a little person? Why yes, yes she is. Tiny flask of brandy hidden in the inner zip-pocket of her old lady purse? Yes, there is that too.

My Auntie Ann is the stuff of legends. My dad affectionately refers to her as "The witch" and "The Poison Dwarf." She's rude, crude and unintentionally the funniest person I know.

When I went back to England after not having been back for ten years, my family and I went to this classy joint called "The Tartar Frigate" on the sun-shiney coast of Broadstairs, Kent. My Aunt was in the middle of a story--which ended with, "And then I found myself hiding in the bushes from Judy, (her sister) and I had to come out because I wet my knickers..." Reading this, you might think, "well that's a pretty normal childhood tale," but Auntie Ann was recalling an event that happened the week before this dinner. For me, and everyone that knows her, this type of story is pretty ordinary.

The waiter comes over, and Ann finds him attractive,

"Oooooh! He's quite dishie innie?" She practically screams, but she most likely thought she was being
 discreet.

"Shh! Auntie Ann! He can hear you!" I whimper, as the waiter looks back at us with a look on his face that resembles that of a new father changing his baby's first shitty diaper. My uncle Hadley, Ann's husband, has taken to just completely ignoring her at this stage of their relationship, and this is perhaps why the marriage has lasted so long.

"Thank Christ I remembered my teeth!" She winks at me, and I shudder as memories of her chasing me around as a child flood back--She's missing two teeth on the upper right side of her mouth, and she used to take out her disgusting retainer (fitted with two fake teeth on it) and chase me around with the gaping mouth-hole exposed.

By the middle of dinner, the waiter has adopted avoiding Auntie Ann like a sorority girl avoids carbohydrates, so she naturally reverts to perversion, a classic strategy of hers when things are going too normally,

"I'm telling you, all Jude (her sister Judy) needs is a bit more of the ol' Rumpy Dumpy." Ann queries loudly, with her wrinkly, freckled, sausage finger in the air. Judy, like Anne, is in her late 70s, and "Rumpy Dumpy" means sex. I coughed on a brussel sprout, and begged my mom to ask for the check. At this stage in my life, I hadn't quite learned how to just sit back and enjoy the show that is Auntie Ann.

I recently went back to England for my college graduation present, and during this trip my Aunt didn't disappoint when it came to being just as crude and perverse as I remember, but more on that later.