Excuse me waitress, there is an eye in my salsa.

I admire people who really live by the cliché “when life gives you lemons make lemonade”. Personally I live by the adage that if life gives you lemons throw a fit, cry, yell then have the world’s largest pity party for yourself. Call it a pity prom and invite all your friends. It isn’t a successful party unless they all go home unhappy.

My mother’s brother has four boys. The oldest is also the most successful. He attended West Point, made great grades, played football, met the woman of his dreams and settled down about half a mile from my uncle’s house. This side of the family has a relationship that can only be found by taking your nose out of a book and talking to one another. Hence the reason my father’s family is about as close as one side of Texas from the other.

My cousin’s first child had a broken chromosome. This caused her to be born with severe mental problems, open heart surgery immediately after birth, physical handicaps, and only one eye. Amy has outlived all of our expectations but the experience has been a trying one on my cousin and his wife, but they chose to make lemonade.

Case in point, the entire family attended a rehearsal dinner at a Mexican restaurant. Amy was sporting a brand new glass eye which she was fixated on playing with at the table. Ed told her several times to “put your eye back in and leave it alone” but she just went right on popping the sucker out. At one point she threw the eye in the salsa. For grins, my uncle called the waitress over to complain about the eye in his salsa. Is it sick that my family would laugh at the expense of an innocent (and equally horrified) waitress? No, it’s squeezing a little bit of pleasure out of life’s less shining moments.