I’ve told many of these stores in the pixels of I Will Dare before. It’s impossible to talk about my childhood without talking about my Uncle John & Aunt Eileen’s family, or the J.Chromeys as we called them during our Chromey vs Chromey bowling years.

A lot of my earliest memories involve their kids, and there were a lot of kids to make memories with — nine in total though they lost one as a newborn and my cousin Colleen died at 17 from bone cancer when I was four.

John & Eileen’s daughters were our babysitters and our playmates. Their youngest, my cousin Wendy, is a year older than I am. We went to junior high and high school together and I’m still a little mad at her for telling Cam Anderson I liked him back in 1984. Laurie, the cousin I have probably written about the most, is the legendary babysitter for the 45 collection that featured Billy Joel and Blondie. Patty is the cousin I lived with for my senior year in high school after my family moved to Chippewa Falls.

John & Eileen’s house was a safe-haven. They lived about a mile and half from us in Blaine, just the other side of Highway 65. It was the house we would escape to when the weather got too tornado-y-looking when we lived in a trailer. It was the place I planned on going to if my dad ever made good on his threats to kick us out of the house.

It was the place with a lot of great toys including Weeble Wobbles, Husker Du, and the Fisher-Price Sesame Street playhouse. It was a house filled with glamorous teenagers and my mysterious cousin Johnny. The only boy with all us girls.

It was a house with a dog house plaque just inside the garage door (or what used to be the garage door, the house has been remodeled since), which endlessly fascinated my sister Ericka and I. We always wanted to know who was in the doghouse. It was the house where I celebrated my high school graduation because my parents didn’t live in Blaine anymore and my Aunt Eileen makes the best potato salad in the history of potato salads.

My Uncle John was a quiet man at a time in my life where quiet meant boiling rage just beneath the surface. He was one of my Dad’s brothers which automatically put him in the scary camp just by being associated with my Uncles Terry & Jim who were loud and unafraid of disciplining noisy children.

It took me a long, long time to not be afraid of Uncle John though he never gave me a reason to be afraid, other than that quietness that unnerved me. He was quiet, but slyly funny. Every conversation I can remember having with him involved laughter.

My Uncle John died on Friday. And I don’t know what words to type here next. Instead I just keep crying and back-spacing. His face, looking so much like my own dad’s, is all over Facebook. His children (again, there are seven of them) and a lot of his grandchildren (19 of them, I think, I am bad at counting and remembering them all) have changed their profile pictures of him. Their grief and love for him is palpable. I’m so sorry they lost this man they loved so dearly. And I am also so thankful for that man, who with my Aunt Eileen, his wife of 61 years!, raised all those cousins who shaped the person I am today.

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As I mentioned before they are gonna tear down the bowling alley to put up a parking lot. So when my cousin Wendy suggested we gather together for a final Chromey v Chromey, everyone was pretty game even though we just had one in November (as is tradition).

After arriving an hour late to Sister #3’s house to finish the t-shirts Jaycie, Max, and I had designed, Sister #3 and I found ourselves in an odd dilemma. We had never done the actual iron-on portion of the t-shirt making. Usually we left that to Sisters #2 and #4 on Thanksgiving night. Of course I had left the instructions at my house and of course we couldn’t get a hold of Sister #2, so we were left with nothing to do but call Sister #4.

We didn’t want to call because she already felt horrible that she couldn’t make it to the final Chromey v Chromey (she lives in Idaho), but we were desperate. She talks us through the iron-on process, we finish the shirts, clothe the children, and rush to the bowling alley.

The joint’s already half-full of the J. Chromey family and it’s chaos. Family events like this are always chaos. There was an extra buzz of energy floating through the air because everyone was waiting for the photog from the Minneapolis Star Tribune to show up.

Amidst this chaos the phone rings, and I pick it up with a little lead in my heart knowing this is probably the last time I’ll get to sigh in exasperation and say “Hello, Dan Patch Lanes.”
“Hey,” the voice on the other end says.
It takes me a minute to realize it’s Sister #4. “Hi Kelli,” I say. “Nobody’s here yet.” I figured she wanted to talk to the J. Chromeys and give them shit about how if they win, it’s because she’s not there.
“Is that Keke?” Jaycie asks while tapping on my belly.
“Yes, you want to talk to her?” I ask.
“Jaycie wants to talk,” I say to Sister #4 on the phone.

I immediately lose track of the phone and the conversation until my mom turns around from the cash register (the phone sits right underneath it) with tears in her eyes.
“She’s crying,” my mom says. “I don’t even know why she called. It’s just upset her and me.”

We’re all a little quiet because we do feel bad about Sister #4 not being here. But then there’s the chaos and that quickly captures our attention, and we quickly forget Sister #4 and her woes.

About ten or fifteen minutes later, Sister #2, #3, and I are all sitting at the bar shooting shit and talking trash to the various J. Chromeys when Sister #3 brings her hands to her mouth and points towards the door. “Oh,” is all she says.

Sister #2 and I look. I immediately start to scream and cry, there in the doorway is Sister #4 with a pair of socks in her hand.
“Jaycie told me on the phone that she needed some socks so she could bowl,” she said. “So I brought her some.”

There was hugging and crying and screaming. I feel bad for that poor Strib photog. He’s probably a little deaf right now.

Turns out that Wendy wasn’t behind the final Chromey v Chromey at all, and it was Sister #4 who was orchestrating the whole thing because she can’t be here next weekend for the final weekend.

She totally punked us and it was glorious.

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yes, look closely, they are all wearing matching shirts. we’re the kind of family who tortures children like that. but, that’s not all, we all wore the shirts. all 12 of us. we’re the chromey party monkeys. just take a look:

actually everyone thought it was the coolest thing ever. ever! the peanut really got a kick out of it. and you should have seen the looks on our cousin’s faces when we started a countdown and unzipped our sweatshirts and coats to reveal the matching party monkey shirts. there were shouts of derision and looks of jealousy in the eyes of the j. chromeys. they were totally envious of our party monkey t-shirts.

and really, who wouldn’t be?

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i found out that this event, which has been in the planning stages for months, is a pot-luck. because what weekend would be complete without MORE bad minnesota hotdish? so i have to go to the store during post-thanksgiving madness to find something suitable for a pot-luck dinner. i’ve already decided i’m not cooking anything and the sister club told me i couldn’t bring nutter butters.

this event should prove quite interesting, because i think yesterday filled my family-togetherness quota quite sufficiently (so much for i before e except after c– i just looked it up). plus, i really, really don’t like bowling. i’m going to try to get out of the actual bowling, because well i need to use my hands on sunday. i promise to bring a camera.

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