Keeping Up with the McCurdys

A few weeks ago I drove to Cavalier on a Sunday to spend time with my family. I arrived just in time for church, where the McCurdy family took up 2.5 pews and got a lot of attention in the process.

“Everyone’s home, what’s the occasion?” people asked my grandpa.

“Whatever you would like it to be,” he responded, just happy to have many of his family members with him.

After church our party of eight took over a local café. We aren’t the quietest of groups and once us three siblings get going with the stories, innocent bystanders should beware. We must have had low blood sugar that day, because it wasn’t until after the meal that we started talking about childhood memories.

We reminisced about the time I hit John with the golf cart, the time John and Kent escaped Mom’s naptime and the time Mom learned how to use the camcorder in the early 90s – before reality television became the hot ticket. Just imagine: our reality show was “Keeping Up with the McCurdys” long before that Kardashian family came along.

We talked about the western movie we shot, complete with costumes, scripts and makeup. My cousin was afraid to scream when her part called for it, so she opened her mouth and made my mom scream for her. Mom was also running the camera, so the microphone on the camera picked up her voice really well.

Memories fade as time passes and Mom asked which one of us ended up buried in our childhood sandbox getting attacked by an army of red ants.

“That was Sarah,” said my middle brother, John, with a smirk on his face. “We should have buried her deeper.”

“I’m sure six feet under would have been just fine,” I fired back.

We joked and jested until my sister-in-law snorted. Then she looked at her husband, “See! We have to have three! With two there just aren’t enough memories.”

By now my family has figured out that I enjoy writing down funny quotations that I overhear, no matter where I am. I have a notebook with me at all times for this very purpose and I later type them into one of the seven multi-page documents on my laptop. The quotations appear on my Website and in the future, many will appear on note cards. Over the years, many people have given me permission to use their quotations, some shy away from the spotlight, and others go to extremes to see their name published.

Some people are just funny no matter what…and my family doesn’t have a choice – I’m using what they say. Even Dad got in on the quote collection at dinner, scrawling them on the empty page of the church bulletin.

Once Kent, my youngest brother, saw that we were officially collecting quotes, he looked me in the eye with the McCurdy straight face and said, “Haven’t you realized that I am the key to your future?”

Yes, and his quotations are going to make me a lot of money someday. Well, at least they will continue to make me laugh. He said other things that day too, but I don’t think I can publish them.

I suppose any one can have a reality show nowadays, but it’s a real joy to be so entertained when cameras, producers and Hollywood are nowhere to be found.