They're not my sick cousin's parents, but an aunt and uncle. They're also my aunt and uncle. They're among the group that hates me, but they were not directly involved in the situation that resulted in my being left in a smoke-filled room when I had a broken leg and a broken clavicle and a kidney infection. Anyway, these people called our home this morning and indicated they were in the area to visit my cousin but needed a place to stay overnight. Then they proceeded to visit my cousin for less than ten minutes. The truth of the matter was that they were planning to be in the area long before they learned of my cousin's plight. No one complained on my cousin's behalf about the length of their visit because anyone as sick as he is couldn't tolerate a much longer visit from them.
This particular aunt and uncle are among the biggest free-loaders on the planet. if you've read many of my posts, you might remember that I have an uncle who's a thief. i don't know whether he posses kleptomaniacal tendencies or if he simply steals for financial gain, but my suspicion is the latter. You may recall that he was arrested a year or so ago for stealing a carton of disposable douches from behind a big box store. He doesn't restrict his stealing to businesses. He stole all the toothpaste from our home two years ago. he's also stolen toilet paper, condiments, paper towels, and more stuff than I can recall from my family alone over the years. Only God knows the sum of the merchandise he's stolen.
My mom took the call from them. If my dad had answered the phone, he said, he would have given them directions to the nearest Motel 6. We had about an hour from the time they called until they actually appeared. this gave us at least some time to hide our most valuable possessions. my dad set the alarm so that my uncle can't sneak out of the house to his car during the night with a few loads of loot he collected from around the house.he'll still take what he can stuff in his suitcase and conceal on his body, but that's a fraction of what he would purloin if he had unrestricted in/out access while we were sleeping.
Because this aunt and uncle despise me, my parents are allowing me to stay in my room with the door locked until my aunt and uncle leave. Some people might think this would be a problem, but those people haven't seen my room. In the room I have a mini-bar (no alcohol, of course, but it does have a mini-fridge and a microwave), a plasma screen TV/DVD player of maybe 45 inches, a computer, a baby grand piano (which I already had; it wasn't bought for the room), a digital piano keyboard, my land line phone, my cell phone, my violin, and all my books. My mom brought food to me. i didn't really want company because I was out with friends all day, so I was in my happy place. my brother came home and soon decided to join me inside my locked room, so i had company whether i wanted it or not. my aunt and uncle give him the willies just as much as the give them to me. i don't know about Matthew, but I'm staying here until they leave tomorrow. we have real locks -- not the kind you can unlock with a paper clip -- on our bedroom doors. My parents have keys to our doors, but my uncle can't get in, so we're safe in here, and Matthew's possessions are secure in his room.
this, too, shall pass.
Showing posts with label kleptomania. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kleptomania. Show all posts
Friday, June 15, 2012
Friday, March 25, 2011
A Black Sheep in the Family, and It's Not I for a Change!
Uncle Mahonri, AKA "Runic Manhole" and "Hernia Column," has found himself in a bit of a quandary. A few months ago I wrote about his innovative budget-easing strategy of helping himself to household staples including but not limited to toothpaste and toilet paper from the supplies maintained by others. It seems that feminine hygiene products can be counted among the products Mahonri obtains gratis.
As a shipment of individually packaged disposable douche products, the brand of which was not disclosed (not that it really matters), was in the process of being delivered to a discount grocery store not far from Mahonri's home, Mahonri intercepted the delivery of a very large carton of the supplies. He loaded the windfall into his minivan and headed home with them. A store employee observed Mahonri's supermarket spree and jotted down his license plate number as he sped away. An hour or so later, local law enforcement showed up at Mahonri's home and located the incriminating empty carton. The contents had already been distributed to bathrooms throughout the family home, as well as to the family's two-year supply of food and essential items.
Mahonri is an employee of the church educational system. This presents a wee bit of a public relations debaucle for the church. The solution decided upon by the church was to proclaim a lapse in mental health, with a physiological cause at its root, as the real culprit. This behavior, according to a local church spokesperson (when a public relations fiasco arises, the church prefers to relegate it to the local levels of church administration)is totally out of character for Uncle Mahonri.
I don't know whether the spokeman is under-informed or is deliberately misleading the public. While, as I am not a professional in either the medical or mental health fields, I am far from qualified to comment on the state of my uncle's sanity (and, for that matter, I've always thought he had more than a few loose screws), whether the issue is one of mental health or one of moral turpitude, the behavior itself is far from recent in onset. When I was three years old, Mahonri helped himself to all the Band-Aids in my family's medicine cabinets. This was only one of my parents' many opportunities to involuntarily participate in Mahonri's creative five-finger-discount system.
The members of my extended family are following the church's lead and are deluding themselves into believing that this behavior is unusual for mahonri. This is sad as well as stupid. Each branch of the family knows fully well the lengths to which they have gone to lock up their food, paper products, printer ink, and anything else Mahonri might find worth his while to lift whenever he has visited any one of us. Faulty wiring in his hard drive or some sort of chemical imbalance may very well have led Mahonri to pilfer the what must surely add up to thousands of dollars worth of goods he has stolen in the years since he has been a part of my extnded family.
My extended family's habit of looking the other way contributed to the situation Uncle Mahonri is now facing. Many years ago my mother attempted to address this problem directly by first confronting Mahonri himself and then, when he reacted with hostility, by approaching Mahonri's wife and my grandparents. My grandparents refused to speak to her for more than a year following her one-woman attempt at staging an intervention. Had someone taken my mother seriously at the time, perhaps the family would not now be suffering such public humiliation.
As a shipment of individually packaged disposable douche products, the brand of which was not disclosed (not that it really matters), was in the process of being delivered to a discount grocery store not far from Mahonri's home, Mahonri intercepted the delivery of a very large carton of the supplies. He loaded the windfall into his minivan and headed home with them. A store employee observed Mahonri's supermarket spree and jotted down his license plate number as he sped away. An hour or so later, local law enforcement showed up at Mahonri's home and located the incriminating empty carton. The contents had already been distributed to bathrooms throughout the family home, as well as to the family's two-year supply of food and essential items.
Mahonri is an employee of the church educational system. This presents a wee bit of a public relations debaucle for the church. The solution decided upon by the church was to proclaim a lapse in mental health, with a physiological cause at its root, as the real culprit. This behavior, according to a local church spokesperson (when a public relations fiasco arises, the church prefers to relegate it to the local levels of church administration)is totally out of character for Uncle Mahonri.
I don't know whether the spokeman is under-informed or is deliberately misleading the public. While, as I am not a professional in either the medical or mental health fields, I am far from qualified to comment on the state of my uncle's sanity (and, for that matter, I've always thought he had more than a few loose screws), whether the issue is one of mental health or one of moral turpitude, the behavior itself is far from recent in onset. When I was three years old, Mahonri helped himself to all the Band-Aids in my family's medicine cabinets. This was only one of my parents' many opportunities to involuntarily participate in Mahonri's creative five-finger-discount system.
The members of my extended family are following the church's lead and are deluding themselves into believing that this behavior is unusual for mahonri. This is sad as well as stupid. Each branch of the family knows fully well the lengths to which they have gone to lock up their food, paper products, printer ink, and anything else Mahonri might find worth his while to lift whenever he has visited any one of us. Faulty wiring in his hard drive or some sort of chemical imbalance may very well have led Mahonri to pilfer the what must surely add up to thousands of dollars worth of goods he has stolen in the years since he has been a part of my extnded family.
My extended family's habit of looking the other way contributed to the situation Uncle Mahonri is now facing. Many years ago my mother attempted to address this problem directly by first confronting Mahonri himself and then, when he reacted with hostility, by approaching Mahonri's wife and my grandparents. My grandparents refused to speak to her for more than a year following her one-woman attempt at staging an intervention. Had someone taken my mother seriously at the time, perhaps the family would not now be suffering such public humiliation.
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