I love aunts. My aunts, your aunts, all aunts. How great are aunts? Aunts are the rodeo clowns of the family. They are the court jesters in a tense public court. They are the comic relief in a tense action drama. They are the furry little animated sidekick in a Disney film. They’re good and crazy.
As a child, you recognize that they’re just a little different from the other adults in the family. They’re funny and weird and never discipline you. They’re grown-ups who seem to have no authority and aren’t interested in acquiring any. They have some kind of relationship with your parents but that has absolutely nothing to do with how they relate to you.
There are two general types of aunts: cool aunts and creepy aunts.
Cool aunts are something special. What makes them cool is that everything they do is cooler than your parents. This isn’t difficult to achieve. Your parents are fried from spending every waking hour watching you, analyzing you, and wondering what they’re doing wrong with you. Responsibility has worn them down to a parental nub.
On the other hand, cool aunts pride themselves on not having any responsibility at all. They wear funny hats and drink big glasses of wine and say inappropriate things at the table. They bring weird boyfriends around once in a while who no one talks to, because they know they won’t be around for long.
Aunts are more like children than adults, and to a kid that’s just cool.
A cool aunt doesn’t look at you as someone to discipline or teach. She knows as much about disciplining children as children do about retirement plans. She looks at you as someone to win over and she isn’t above trying to buy your love. Knowing this is a huge advantage for a kid.
If your parents won’t give you Doritos for breakfast, just ask your aunt. Do your parents say that video games are too violent? Your aunt doesn’t care. You need some cash? Your aunt’s got some and she’s willing to give it to you because she knows that you’re the closest thing to her own kids that she’s going to get. And she’s probably drunk. That’s cool. That’s like Keith Richards cool.
Sure, there’s some competition for the coolest relative in the family. Grandma is always a steady favorite but can that old bag with the wobbly neck really compare? Let’s see Grandma sneak you into an R-rated movie and drop major cash on popcorn and Sour Patch Kids. Grandma doesn’t rock. Grandma naps.
A cool uncle is pretty close but a cool uncle is also dangerous. No one trusts that a cool uncle won’t go over the line and turn a trip to the store into a long weekend in South Beach. No, the cool aunt knows how to walk the line. She wins.
Aunts have secrets too. Who really knows what your aunt does? She has a whole other life that she keeps hidden from the family. She has friends with exotic names and goes to wild places. She has a favorite dance club she frequents with a bunch of gay friends. She drinks during the day. She has a job that she doesn’t talk about so you know it must be something strange.
Even the aunt with kids can be cool. She might have her own kids and she might even be strict with those kids, but she treats you differently. She knows what you’re up to, she’s seen it all before, but she’ll let you slide. She’s like a cop about to bust two drug dealers and you’re the guy jaywalking across the street. She sees you but just can’t be bothered right now.
Cool Aunt is great.
And then there’s Creepy Aunt. This is the aunt who you really don’t want to see and you definitely don’t want to kiss hello. This is the aunt with weird hairs sticking out of that weird bubbly thing attached to her weird-shaped chin. This is the aunt who brings her own food in plastic containers because she has a lot of dietary restrictions. She smells like rose water and mothball soup.
Creepy Aunt drinks but tries to keep it a secret. She’s not all goofy with a goblet of white wine like Cool Aunt. Creepy Aunt is into real-deal, serious drinking. She carries a worn silver flask attached to her leg with a garter belt. She doesn’t drink from it, she takes snorts from it. Creepy.
She’s the aunt who has weird-lady undergarments with strange straps and clasps that she hangs all around the bathroom after they’ve been floating in the sink. Creepy Aunt likes to hand wash things. Creepy.
If there’s a cat lady in your family, chances are it’s Creepy Aunt. Creepy Aunt doesn’t even know how many cats she has because she’s lost count. She just keeps opening cans of cat food and licking her fingers as more strays wander into her place. Creepy Aunt’s apartment smells like kitty litter and old blankets and is covered in cat hair, but she likes all that hair, because when it sticks to her she thinks she looks a little like a cat herself.
Creepy Aunt is on a fixed income and doesn’t want to spend money feeding you and quite frankly doesn’t really want you around. That’s okay, because you don’t want to be left alone with Creepy Aunt, either. Maybe you ended up spending the night at Creepy Aunt’s place when your parents ditched you, but that’s a night you will not forget, neither of you enjoyed, and you will never repeat.
Unlike Cool Aunt, Creepy Aunt doesn’t act like a kid, because she was never really a kid herself. She’s the kind of person who at six years old would lean against the monkey bars and wonder why she was stuck with all these children. She’s always been an adult and she thinks if you’re standing up straight you must read the New Yorker and want to discuss Middle East politics. If you can’t keep up with the conversation, she thinks you’re stupid and sneaks off for another snort from her flask.
Creepy Aunt has secrets too, but hers are creepier. She has secrets about porcelain fairies and a collection of dirty old dolls that she talks to. What makes it even creepier is that she thinks they talk back.
The strange thing about Creepy Aunt is that you will probably come to appreciate her later in life. Because she doesn’t know much about people your age, she will often give you a gift that means nothing to you as a child. But years later when you are packing or unpacking your belongings, you will find some great book that only now you understand and suddenly she makes sense. She was able to see “future you” and knew that one day you’d appreciate it. That’s nice, but also, still creepy.
Either way, aunts are cool. Aunts are crazy. Aunts are out of their gourds. And they’re a really fun part of the family. If you’re really lucky you’ll have two or three aunts who come together like the witches from Macbeth or the Marx Brothers in drag. They travel together in a boozy pack and are more fun than a box of kittens.
You know you’re in for a good boozy time when somebody looks out the window and yells, “Mom, the aunts are here!”