My Big Fat...

Today is the annual family reunion for the paternal side of my clan. This is the very first time in my life I have not attended. I would have gone, but I'm 742 weeks pregnant, and travel is ill advised in the 247th trimester.

Every year dozens upon dozens of cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents descend upon a pavilion in a small exhibition farm in western Pennsylvania for a day filled with polka music and more food than you can even imagine. The kids play egg toss and feed hot dog buns to the farm animals while the old folks reminisce and listen to the Slovene Radio Hour. If the weather is nice, someone will bring the old family photo albums. Then everybody will argue over whether that's Frank or Hank in that picture from Uncle Vince's wedding.

When we were little, we would wait, impatiently I'm sure, to be taken to the farm. We would pull on our mothers' arms until a handful of adults would relent and round us kids up for the walk. There were bunnies and chickens, horses and cows. One year, out of the blue there was a goat. It might have been a ram. It had horns, that's all I know. We were so enthralled with this new creature that we hardly noticed that its head fit easily through the posts of fence keeping it contained. In fact, we didn't notice this at all until the goat/ram had my little brother Danny's foot ensnared in said horns. Once it had pulled his little foot into its pen, it tried to eat his shoe. My mother pulled my brother out, but the goat/ram was apparently rubber starved and had Danny's shoe firmly held in its teeth. One of my older cousins or younger uncles jumped the fence and, after a few tense moments, managed to retrieve my brother's shoe before the goat/ram did too much damage.

This story is one of millions that get re-told every year at the reunion, and like the others it seems to become more detailed with the passage of time. The best stories always do.