I've always had a special little place in my shriveled up Grinch heart for each and every one of my 42,000 cousins. Sure, your siblings will take bb gun bullets for you, but they also do stuff like look you up and down before you go out and say, "Are you gonna wear that?" Cousins, due to their once-removed status, are consistently nicer than siblings.
It used to be that our house and my Lola's house (both on the same street in Daly City, once upon a long time ago) served as a weekend hub of sorts and we could eat pancit and play kickball and butt's up (bloody 'ell! ouch!) and shove puto in our pockets to eat later and be forced to sing ('Look at me/I'm as helpless as a kitten/up a treeeee') against our will. But even before I was through with high school, many of the families scattered too far away for these weekend check-ins. Weddings, funerals, and the family reunion (finally instituted fifteen years ago) were the only time I spent with my gaggle of cousins. We knew each other, but we didn't know each other. Anymore.
Enter the family message board! Gads, I love the internet. Without it, I wouldn't know that Luj left yesterday for the Kauai Music Festival with freshly written songs stuffed in his backpack. Wouldn't know that Gica is now a certified Holistic Healthcare Nutritionist or that someone has just mysteriously wired $10,000 into her bank account. I wouldn't have known about my Ate Cristy's twisted love of Stephen King novels (I do know, from childhood, about her obsession with Jesus Christ, Superstar. And Alice Cooper). Wouldn't have seen pictures of Morris with his almost-new son on their first trip to the Philippines. And that's just the tasty layer of grease on top of the adobo, my people. There's so much more.
I like my cousins. My cousins are good.
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