I'm bart simpson who the hell are you in Tales from Pine Springs

Ok so my whole family just got into a huge loud fight at Angino’s which is this one place that has this really good meatball dip that I ordered and it was great even though we left before I could eat very much of it.

Ugh. It all started this morning when Meatball (my brother, not the meatball from the dip) came over and excitedly shared with us that he just got a new job as a computer engineer or something like that and the pay was 95,000/year. He’s younger than me, he’s 26, so that is a pretty big deal. Shrimp was overjoyed and I was happy for him too but yes it does bring attention to my status as a failure and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t slightly annoyed at the news but whatever. Fast forward a couple of hours and we are at “lunch” with my two aunts and Shrimp & Burrito (Today is Shrimp’s birthday). Now it should be mentioned that my first aunt (Shrimps first younger sister) is the head nurse at this one hospital around here (not the one I was born at, but the one where BD died). However, she never goes to work, like, ever? Then we have Suitcase which is Shrimp’s youngest sister. I call her Suitcase because she tried to drop a suitcase from a balcony onto her first husband in 1993 after the got into this huge fight and ended up getting divorced right after that. I saw the whole thing because I was staying at their house for some reason.

I knew it was going to be awkward with the whole Meatball announcement because it’s like I’m this person who is 28 single and I live with my mom and have this weird part time job and have made a lot of mistakes in my life that I’m sure they all know about and yes I’m in grad school but until I actually start working and having something to show for it, nobody cares. Meatball, being a quiet and polite person, didn’t mention anything about his job but of course Shrimp did.

Now Shrimp (surprisingly) didn’t say anything about the pay but my first aunt inquired and Meatball was trying to act like he didn’t remember the figure but Shrimp cut in and told my aunt how much. So the first thing that happens is my aunt looks at me and raises her eyebrows and says WOW! Keep in mind my aunt runs on a steady flow of Ativan (unlike Shrimp who is more of a nights and weekends pill-popper) and so she is always a little slurry and slow to react to things, so it did take her a couple moments to process.

So then we have Suitcase who is a special ed teacher who also for some reason was not at work today. So she has two daughters and the eldest one is autistic and she is my favorite cousin because she had this phase a couple of years ago where she watched Meet Me in St Louis over and over and over again on her phone and she did it throughout entire family events and spoke to nobody. I was like “woah…GOALS”.

Her other daughter is cool and does archery and stuff. I haven’t seen her in a while but she is really young I think she is turning 16 in a couple of days. But even with her, you can tell she is not like a super overachiever or anything. So you can tell that Suitcase feels bitter about the whole Meatball thing too cause she’s sitting in the corner on her phone probably ordering 3 boxes of wine to be delivered to her house.

Then we have auntie Ativan’s daughter who I just spent the weekend with. I actually really like her but here’s the whole thing with her. She is only 22 years old, married to an older guy who has money, pregnant (about to pop) and I kid you not, is fucking Instagram famous because of her art. She makes money for that too and got a full scholarship to this nice art school where she graduated early and got married to this perfect guy blah blah blah. SO for all intents and purposes she lives the “perfect” life and Shrimp absolutely HATES it. And Shrimp being so visibly bitter about it makes both Meatball and I feel like we are inadequate, well until now.

NOW THE INADEQUATE CHEESE STANDS ALONE. Meatball crossed over to the other side with the other successful people now. The days of him having his car stolen by meth heads are long gone.

Though Ativan did mention “Now it’s time for you to meet your future wife” which I chuckled that because you know we are all pretty sure Meatball is gay.

SO anyway, after Shrimp mentioned Meatballs salary, Burrito actually chimed in and said something like “We can just leave it at, he got a job. Why do we always have to talk about money?” Meatball agreed and it could have stopped there, but then I fucked it up because I just HAD to point out that my mother likes to brag about her kids and it has always made both of us feel uncomfortable and it is literally caused people to hate Shrimp and to hate us for no reason.

So basically I started the whole thing because this is where things popped off. Burrito agreed with me and added that it’s always been a competition between Shrimp’s kids and Ativan’s kid and then Suitcase added “Well lucky for me my kids aren’t even considered.” which lead to me saying “Your kids are lucky”.

I actually like Suitcase because she was always the most fun back in the day. She had lifetime passes to Disney World and bloo carpet in her basement and collected toys. After her dramatic divorce (which she had when she was my age…), she had this mental breakdown and then suddenly decided she wanted to get married again and immediately have kids, and that is how she found her current husband who I call Uncle Dump Truck.

So then Shrimp tried to say that she isn’t bragging, she just needs to share the news to somebody since she no longer has PARENTS and then it’s like woah, now you opened the big BD and DD can o’ worms so then I knew things were going to escalate.

“Yeah well none of us have parents anymore because we all had the same parents” - Suitcase.

I was trying to get in to my meatball dip at this point so I didn’t really pay attention for a while but it somehow got onto the idea of their husbands and Ativan talking about how her husband doesn’t make enough money (which she always complains about). Then Shrimp brought up how Burrito had to do Suitcase & Dump Truck’s taxes because they are too stupid to figure it out and Suitcase started freaking out about how Shrimp asked her how much money her autistic daughter wanted for her graduation and then the subject got on how Suitcase goes to scrapbooking retreats every weekend and Shrimp goes:

“WELL HOW MANY DAMN SCRAPBOOKS CAN YOU MAKE WHEN YOU NEVER SEE YOUR KIDS OR DO ANYTHING ANYWAY BECAUSE YOU ARE AWAY SCRAPBOOKING EVERY WEEKEND. WHAT DO YOU MAKE SCRAPBOOKS OF YOUR FUCKING SCRAPBOOKING RETREATS?”

And then like I started laughing because that was funny.

Shrimp went on: “ALL YOU WANTED WAS KIDS” Then she did the “boo hoo poor me dramatic” voice she always does when she imitates Suitcase.

Then Burrito got the check and was like OK WE ARE GONNA LEAVE NOW.

This is what I gather from the whole thing in conclusion:

• Shrimp is the oldest child and has always bullied her younger siblings (except her brother who is 9 years younger than her and didn’t really count)
• Because Ativan and Suitcase were bullied by Shrimp, they wanted to get back at her by identifying the fact that Shrimp is a drunk, pill-poppin, mental mess who had terrible relationship and job history, and trying their hardest to do better than her to prove a point.
• So Ativan stayed with her husband who she hates just so she can say she was only married once.
• She somehow was able to produce a talented child and fucking BANKED on that for years, especially after the 5 years she had to deal with Shrimp bragging to her about how bart I was as a kid and learned how to talk at such a young age and said hilarious things that everyone thought was so cute.
• Yes I might have been cute and funny but her kid actually did something and so she always rubbed it in and made Shrimp feel bad now so now this was war and it’s been going on forever.
• Suitcase also tried very hard to be better than Shrimp and this is probably why she forced marriage and a family when she clearly was not meant for it.
• I bullied Meatball when we were kids and so he probably is doing the same thing that Shrimps siblings did with her and he tried to be better than me which wasn’t that hard since he’s like a genius and I’m ADHD and dumb as fuck.
• But now Meatball has established that he is better than me and I don’t try to compete back so now we both don’t care. Also Meatball is a guy and even though he might be gay he has very little interest in being dramatic.

I talked to Burger and he, as usual reminded me that Shrimp’s whole family was “Bblblabblab” (he made a muppet sound) and told me I should have said the reason I studied Psychology is because I am interested in how mental they are. lol

Oh, I did mention I was writing my treatment plan for Amanda Bynes and Aunt Ativan looked at me like “Well isn’t that special”. See, it doesn’t matter than I’m getting a Master’s degree. To them, what I’m doing is stupid because I’m too old to not be already working a real job.

And yeah, I really am writing my paper on treating Amanda Bynes, so what? That’s what you fucking do an an Introduction to Addiction Studies class. I should have told Auntie Ativan I was writing a treatment plan for HER.

~k

Last updated April 12, 2018