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Family
Never Ask A Five-Year-Old To Pray
It’s an hour of your life you’ll never get back.
My Uncle Clyde was a devoutly religious man. He was also a professor.
The combination is deadly.
Uncle Clyde had a deep, commanding voice and a demeanor that could suck all the joy out of a room in seconds.
Clyde was my mother’s brother and he had three sons, my cousins, who were all a thousand years older than me. The eldest was a carbon copy of Uncle Clyde. He married a woman who put water on their daughter’s cereal because she “didn’t want her to get fat.”
The next son flaked out and became a permanent student. I think he’s a forest ranger or something in Colorado.
The third son was fractionally closer to my age and was my only hope of entertainment. When they came to visit us on the farm, he gamely allowed me to tie him to objects with binder twine and walk away giggling like a maniac.
Every Thanksgiving or Christmas of my childhood was cursed by a visit to Uncle Clyde’s house.
After suffering through a two-hour drive in my best, most uncomfortable clothes, we arrived at Uncle Clyde’s suburban street. We might as well have been…
