Cousins. You love them, you hate them, there’s nothing quite like them. If you are like me, you spent almost every waking moment of your childhood with your cousins and that makes for some interesting experiences and hilarious memories.
Trips to Grandma’s house.
As a child, going over Grandma’s house was almost like the experience of going to the local bar/club is now. Grandma and Pappy’s house was where all the cousins met up and if you were the unlucky cousin that wasn’t there, you’re going to miss all of the jokes that happened that random Tuesday night. You don’t want to be that cousin. Grandma’s house was the place to be, not necessarily for Grandma herself (even though we all adored her), but because it’s the place you got to have the most fun with your cousins.
The torture, bullying, teasing, fighting…
Looking back, it seems that “having fun” basically meant torturing each other as much as possible. Especially growing up with a majority of male cousins, hanging out with them meant you would volunteer to be the object of their teasing and fake-fighting until you run out of the room crying. You quickly learn how important it is to have a thick skin (or at least pretend you do) and learn how to fight back. And when you’re all grown up, you’re secretly happy that your cousins taught you how to be tough, even though you went through hell and back to become that way.
They know your most embarrassing moments.
You probably did the most weird, crazy, and embarrassing things as a kid because you didn’t know any better. But, because you were always with your crew of cousins, they know EVERYTHING. Forget trying to keep something quiet, as soon as the mortifying event happened, every cousin knew and immediately started to use that to make fun of you endlessly. (See above for the torture section). And don’t think it stops at childhood. Your cousins probably still to this day bring up those embarrassing moments to any person who doesn’t know that story yet. *cringe*
The mortal enemy cousin.
Not sure if this is true for every family, but in my family, we had that cousin who was just your mortal enemy. In my case, it was my older cousin, Ben. I HATED Ben when I was growing up.
This is the cousin who you feel just had it against you since you were born. This cousin did everything in his/her power to make you cry or physically hurt you. I can’t even tell you how many painful pinches, pushes, slaps, you name it!, because of this cousin. I even blame him for breaking my foot back in the fourth grade.
Everyone else in the cousin crew knows that you two are enemies and they probably all picked sides in this family feud.
Hopefully, the bad blood between you two didn’t persist into adulthood. You’ll be happy to know that my cousin and I are actually rather close now and we just laugh about all of my misfortunes as a child.
The youngest had it bad.
If you were the youngest cousin, your life probably sucked. There’s no other way to put it. It’s almost always the youngest who is made fun of the most. But, it doesn’t always have to be the last-born cousin. Whoever was the youngest in the group in that specific moment was probably the object of torment. So basically the moral of the story… you’re never safe.
To be honest, if you grew up with your cousins, you probably relate to these horror stories. Even though there is a ton of bullying and fighting between cousins, those moments probably just made you all extremely close. If you spent a lot of time with your cousins, the fighting is expected, but what ultimately comes out of it is feeling as if each and every one of your cousins are more like brothers and sisters. We survived our crazy, fun, wild childhood and now we all have an extensive amount of funny stories to share with each other and crack up over how insane we all were.
I wouldn’t trade all of the fighting, crying, and maddening moments growing up because it led us to being one of the closest families that I know. I love you all.
(Even Ben).
