Streetlights

There’s this little kid that is my cousin. For a long time, I figured he was around Bien’s age but no, he’s just morbidly obese. Apparently he’s four years old which I’m not sure I entirely believe. If you’ve ever seen the guy you’d know what I’m talking about. Whenever he came over he’d just eat a lot and watch Cocomelon or whatever kids are watching nowadays, probably some British dude with dyed hair that yells too much. Also, it could be due to his (alleged) young age but I find him to be a bit slow. I tried to play rummy with him and he just did not get it at all. It’s not as if I dislike the kid. I just feel pretty bad for him. He’s already overweight, acts a little oddly, and he’s being raised by an iPad. His sister, is about the same. I find her a bit annoying because she’s starting to go through that moody phase, though she’s still only a bit older than Bien. She’s not overweight like her brother. That’s really the only good thing I can say about her.

Their dad, I don’t really talk to. But I don’t like him much. He’s never spoken a word to me and I don’t have much of a say in this but I don’t think the kids are being raised properly. A few years back I woke up to the sound of this guy screaming like someone had just stabbed him in the foot. The neighbor had come over to complain about the dog barking too much, and the guy answered. At first it started off normal with the guy nodding to the complaints, and then he started screeching and yelling about how he was always telling our mom to take better care of it and how is kid (the obese one) was allergic to dogs. It’s perplexing how he didn’t have the social awareness to realize what a psychopath he looked like. The neighbor was probably expecting a civil discussion and was met with some middle-aged dude suddenly ranting about nothing at all. They were visibly uncomfortable and awkwardly pretended to agree with the guy’s grievances and quickly left. On the brightside, there were no more complaints about the barking. It’s hard to believe he’s my uncle, and a bit frightening to know that we share the same genes.

On the opposite side, my aunt is a lawyer with two normal kids. The older one is pretty standard and the younger one has recently started to talk and run around. They seem to take care of their kids well and probably have a bright future ahead of them.

I have about fifty billion aunts so I don’t know most of them. They don’t really hang around as much as the aunt I mentioned above so I won’t talk about them. All I can say is that they don’t like me very much. Whenever I’m around they pretend I don’t exist. Granted I was pretty annoying since I last saw them. As for their personalities, I think they’re all pretty shallow like my mom.

All in all I don’t care for my mom’s side of the family. Half of them would rather pretend I’d died three years ago and the rest I don’t like. The little kids are way too young to be any fun to hang around. I tried to get them to play video games with me, and they were too stupid to understand any of it. The same thing happened with rummy and poker. They’d just do whatever I did (they checked every round) and eventually got bored and walked off. So I could only watch them play tic-tac-toe or run around with plastic guns screaming and making shooting sound effects with their mouths.

There’s too many people on my dad’s side of the family. I don’t know them, so I won’t bother. They’re more of strangers to me anyway. Maybe that’s wrong to say but it’s the truth. Whenever I see them I don’t think of them as family members, but just as “those guys.” I see them about once a year and we never exchange more than a greeting. My dad gets mad because I can’t say how they’re related to me or what their names are. It’s not as if I live with the people or something so I don’t see why I should know much beyond my immediate family and closer relatives. I’m sure they don’t really care for me much either which is okay. I don’t know them and they don’t know me, and the world goes round. It shouldn’t be such a big deal.

At school I sit with these three guys.

The first one was there since the beginning of the year. He’s sort of a nerd who watches anime. Just imagine a guy who gets bullied a lot and you’ll picture him. Our school doesn’t have any bullying problems, which is probably why he hasn’t learned to stop being so socially awkward and learned to stop being a total cheeseball. Well, I don’t dislike him. I don’t really like him either. I don’t think he’s funny (though he probably thinks he is) and he’s kind of slow. School-wise he’s on the smarter half of my lunch table but I hate it when people think grades measure intelligence. I wouldn’t really care about him being dumb since I don’t care about stupid people, but since he has good grades he acts really pretentious. By that I mean he uses words he doesn’t know the meaning of and will argue the dumbest things out of ignorance. So of course yours truly has to put him in his place. I think most of our discussions just involve me telling him off for saying something ignorant, and him just deflecting by repeating a sarcastic “sure” so he can save face and not reveal that he’s a total moron. Also I’m fairly certain he’s racist. There’s a black guy at our table and he’s always making black “jokes.” I don’t even think you could call them jokes because it’s mostly just in poor taste. His zingers include “Shut up you’re black,” and that’s about it. He probably thinks it’s real funny. I don’t think racist jokes are the worst thing ever because they’re just jokes, but it raises a few eyebrows when you target them specifically at a single person in the group. I told him to knock it off several times, and he would respond by saying that he was joking, which is the equivalent of “it’s just a prank bro.” It’s irritating but I won’t push him on it because I don’t want to look like a total arse.

The second one joined a month or two into the year. I knew him in the seventh grade, and he’s just sort of there. He’s a total geek for video games. He’s usually playing on his phone during class, but whenever the teachers says anything game-related he stops being shy and starts talking on and on. I asked him what kind of music he listened to and he told me that he listens to video game soundtracks. Part of me feels bad for him. The other part of me think’s that he chose this lifestyle and deserves whatever he gets. As for funniness, I don’t think he’s super funny. He’s funnier than the first guy who has never made me laugh, but I wouldn’t call him a comedian. He’s more so the guy you tell jokes to since he laughs pretty easily. Aside from video games he’s also a Discord user. Everyday he laughs purposefully and obnoxiously loud so we’ll ask him what he’s laughing at and he can show us a crappy meme he saw in Discord. I never ask because I think it’s kind of cringe how he tries to get us to look. The first guy always bites though and lets him show off the crappy meme. After we don’t laugh the second guy always acts like we’re the ones without a sense of humor.

Third guy joined around halfway through the year. I’d argue he’s the most important one in the group considering he’s the most extraverted. Whenever he’s not around the other two nerds will just sit on their phones the whole lunch period waiting for someone else to talk first, that or they really were planning to play on their phones for a whole fifty minutes. I’ve always been annoyed by people who will sit on their phones during social outings (family gatherings don’t count) so I sit in front of the tapping the table and giving them an irritated look. Then I’ll try to start a conversation and they’ll reply in the most boring, lame way possible that makes it impossible for me to carry on the conversation without barraging them with questions. The third guy is actually funny and doesn’t play on his phone, so we actually talk then. His jokes are pretty vulgar and low-class but it’s still humorous. He’s not a nerd like the other two so I’d say he’s pretty alright. Out of all of us though, I think he looks the most like a nerd, which is pretty ironic.