Aunt Joy

Everybody seems to have that one member of their family that is just...well...different. That one member that you would rather not introduce to anyone outside your family. The person that you tell stories about, but hope that you are never around to actually experience the stories. Now, some families are blessed to have more than just one, some have two, or three, or more. In the inaugural post of "Based on a True Story" I would like to introduce you to one such member of my family, Aunt Joy (names have been changed to protect the guilty).

Perhaps the best way to introduce Aunt Joy, or anyone, is just to dive into the story and let her personality come out.

Aunt Joy comes from a very large family. Perhaps the best way to describe the family is that they are from rural Utah Valley, Utah. Now, those reading this that are from Utah know what this statement means. Those that may not be, the best explanation I can give is one word, "hick."

Now, luckily some of the family escaped, and a couple of Aunt Joy's nephews became dentists. That is actually where this story begins.

Aunt Joy has a sister, her name is not really of consequence for this story, so we shall call her Lily. Lily had two sons, both of which grew up to become dentists. Many years have passed at this time, and Aunt Joy and Lily are both quite old, and both living on their own. One fine morning, Aunt Joy called up the office of one of her nephews and said, "Lily has a really bad toothache, she needs to come in immediately."

As I am sure you know, dentist's offices are often busy, and usually you must book an appointment in advance to get in, and even under the emergency circumstances you are stuck waiting for a while. However, things are shuffled for your mother. Thus, the dentist's assistant shuffled patients, moved people here, moved people there, and a spot was made for Lily to come in to get her teeth checked.

The day of the appointment arrived, Lily, however, did not. Then, just as the assistant was about to phone Lily to see what happened, Aunt Joy walks in.

"Hello, I regret to inform you, that Lily is not going to be able to make it today, I'm sorry. However, seeing that you now have an open space, I'll just have my teeth checked instead." The office was a bit in shock, but what could they do? Thus, Aunt Joy's teeth were checked. She left exclaiming, "It's so nice to have a nephew to do my dental work for free!"

Turns out, Lily never had a toothache, she never even knew that there was an appointment. Aunt Joy, the mastermind.