A south texas christmas and death chairs

Holidays are all about family, and so for Christmas my family took a trip down south to the bustling metropolis of Raymondville, TX- Home of my grandparents, my aunt and uncle, and that large Mexican family down the road that blasts mariachi music all day. I hadn’t been there in a long time, so it was nice to return.
I pretty much just read all day and watched tv at night. I hate to be anti-social, but that is the way I always am around family. I set this precedent of the quiet, shy bookworm when I was little, so now I just slip right back into the role any time I am around them. I really wish I could be different, and show my outgoing, conversational side. I always vow to do that when I go see them, but it never happens.
Anyway, it was a fairly low-key christmas.
My aunt and uncle are the type of people that take a bi-weekly cruise and have had a tv with the square-footage of my bedroom for years. They have a newer, cooler tv now, and lots of other gadgets, like a piano that plays itself, and a treadmill that takes you on all sorts of runs, measures your heart rate, and when necessary performs open heart surgery. The newest addition to this house-of-wonders is one of those intense massage chairs you see in the front of stores like brookstone and sharper image. You know, the ones that draw you into the store knowing you won’t (and can’t afford to) buy anything. Admit it, you always go into the store just to play with stuff and lay on that mattress that is eerily hard until you sit down on it and it begins to eat you.
This chair they have is one of those that is always on display in those stores, and that you never get to try because some middle-aged man is laying there with his eyes fixated on the control panel, while his kids run around playing with alarm clocks that jump on the bed and give you a wet willy when you try to hit snooze.
When you sit down in this chair, it is not advisable to put it on the “shiatsu” setting. Shiatsu is the Japanese word for “beat the shi...at out of you”. The only tolerable setting is “gentle”, and even then is makes me attempt escape at times. Only problem is that it doesn’t let you escape. This is due to the fact that there are grooves for your legs that tighten to the point of inescapable pain. I expected at any point for metal clamps to shoot out over my arms and legs, and for a computerized voice to explain that I was being held hostage. Luckily it let me go after the 15 minute beating every time. I will admit, I did it more than once. It was almost masochistic.

It was during one of these pummel sessions that my aunt was the last one to go to bed and wanted to teach me how to turn off the tv. Little did I know, this requires a short class, and actually counts for credit at some smaller universities. Unfortunately when she started to teach me, I just kinda nodded and said, “yeah, yeah, I think I got it”. I said this out of complete ignorance, but in my defense I was busy being punched in the kidneys by this chair.
Well later that night when bedtime came, I was left all alone, just me and the wall of electronics. I wanted to turn off the TV, so I found a few remotes and started pushing buttons. Apparently I was choosing the wrong ones. After struggling for 10 minutes, I got the screen to turn off, let out a relived sigh, and then a pitiful whimper when I realized the sound was still on. I sincerely considered just leaving it until someone took care of it the next morning, but I wanted to conquer that thing. So I kept pushing buttons. Eventually I decided to go right to the device since the remotes were not working. I counted 9 different electronic boxes by the tv. Great.
The electronic battle wore me out, and the next day was full of adventure. While preparing for lunch, the ham was stuffed into the last remaining oven space, and apparently dripped into the bottom.
This makes smoke…lots of smoke.
My aunt possess a posse of (4) small dogs (you know- the yappy kind). Each dog she buys gets smaller, and eventually I am convinced someone someday will sell her a rat, which would be nice, because then it wouldn’t bark. Anyway, the smoke alarms went off, then the dogs went off, and all I could think was cacophony. (haha family joke. Yeah all our jokes pretty much center around nerdy words or something.) The house was full of smoke and piercing noise, so I just went outside and sat in the porch swing while the rest of my family tried to actually fix the problem. The sad thing was that this occurred right as all the food was ready. And then I saw the brilliance of my grandpa...
He just walked right into the smoke-filled kitchen, piled up a plate of food, walked to the table, sat down and ate contentedly. Everyone else was running around and yelling while trying to stop the smoke detectors, and there he was, amidst all the smoke, just eating. I guess one benefit of being old and hearing-impaired is that smoke alarms don’t stop you from food. That is when I decided to join him.
The two of us were still sitting there eating when my uncle walked in authoritatively with a leaf-blower to rid the smoke detector area of smoke. They had managed to stop one detector, but the other was still bleeping just as loudly as ever. The leaf-blower was a great idea, until it blew smoke back into the other smoke detector and got it going once again. I found all of this rather amusing, but given the panicked nature of everyone else I just kinda chuckled to myself. Turns out that one smoke detector wouldn’t stop because they needed some kind of code to stop it. They didn’t know the code, and didn’t really know what to do. Their house was too advanced even for them! It is like that house Ray Bradbury wrote about in that creepy story...
After 20 minutes, they found a phone number to call, and there was a noticeable silence…until my aunt tried wiping up the oven with a pee pad (What her little dogs “go” on) and it caught on fire. HAHAHAHAHA- I am sorry, it was just too funny. It wasn’t serious, and she took it outside and beat that fire down.
So my south texas christmas was full of joy and glee and smoke alarms and death chairs, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I am always up for a good story.