Tales from the Crypt....

Oh no! I lost a follower!!

This is what happens when I stop blogging regularly.

I'm sorry, guys. I've just been really busy. I was in Detroit this past weekend, celebrating G-unit's birthday--the big 9-4!! You know that party was off the chain!

We totes got crunked. We mixed Ensure and Efferdent and got wiz-asted!!!

Of course, I jest. The trip to Detroit was actually quite painless, as I was there about 72 hours, and slept til noon two days in a row. My mom and I actually got along, as we tend to do in Detroit--it's like we band together when faced with our extended family's dysfunction. As you all know, when it comes to visiting the Detroit fam, Sojourner is the black(tress) sheep of the clan. What, with my "talking white" and my having a passport and all, my family doesn't quite know what to do with me.

I spent every summer in Detroit until I was 14, and started private school when I was 10, making those last 4 years especially painful. Up until then, I was mocked for being too dark and for being chubby and wearing glasses. Add in my clipped diction (I was preparing myself for the stage, clearly) and my love of the film “Little Women” (to this day, my cousins mock my love of Winona Ryder), and I just couldn’t win.

Honestly, though, I’m not bitter. We’re all adults now, and have come to accept each other. We’ve even added each other as Facebook friends. And even though I maintain strict privacy settings with the fam, it warms my heart when my cousin wishes me a happy birthday via wall post. I also think that my time traveling solo in foreign lands has steeled me—I have no qualms about sitting in the midst of people speaking Swedish, and don’t need to be filled in, or be liked. And, quite frankly, my extended family may as well be speaking Swedish, because the shit they say is so cuckoo bananas, I don’t even know how to respond.

Of course, when I told my cousin I had a new boyfriend, she instantly asked if he was white. I showed her Jewboo’s pics on FB.
“Oh, he’s cute. He puts [family friend’s white boyfriend] to shame.”
Apparently, we’re in some sort of interracial-romance competition. My other cousin believes I’m a failure to my race for dating a white guy, but doesn’t blame me, because “it’s how you grew up. You been around white folks. It make sense, you been confused.” This, coming from the man who suggests I find "high-functioning" crackheads to help with household chores.

Um, when’s our return flight?

I learned how young the madness starts when someone’s 4-year-old son came over, and he took a shine to Sojourner. For some reason, he needed my attention all throughout the birthday party, and at one point, found a pencil sharpener shaped like a nose. It was beige-colored. When a random guest, trying to engage him, asked, “Whose nose is that?” the young boy replied, totally nonchalantly:
“It’s a white devil’s nose.”
From the mouths of Detroit babes.

Detroit is the city that god forgot on so many levels. As we passed burned down buildings and desolate streets, it’s not hard to see why it has a population of less than 1 million. As we drove by “Lil’ Poo Poo’s Auto Body Repair,” it’s not hard to see why my family thinks I’m uppity—clearly, their expectations are skewed.

Who is “Lil’ Poo Poo,” and why on earth would he put his nickname on his business?
WHAT IF IT ISN”T A NICKNAME????

This didn’t really surprise me, seeing as, when we couldn’t find the gate for our flight to Detroit, I was able to locate it by following the girl wearing a full head of curlers in the airport at 12:30pm. Clearly, she was bound for the D. And when she asked the flight attendant if the plane had a plug so she could charge her phone, I knew she wasn’t making any connections.

I’m sorry if I’m sipping on Detroit HATE-orade. The trip wasn’t even as bad as it could have been, or as it’s been in the past. It’s just that it’s so frustrating to feel like I’m the odd one, the crazy one, when all I do is read books and have a Jewboo. It’s total Twilight Zone sometimes.

I was talking to my grandmother, and she’s asking me about my travels, and she goes:

“Have you been to that place where they make the stuff?”

Okay, now I’m not even about to make fun of G-Unit, cause she’s 94 and all, but, um, WHAT? She’s actually quite sharp, and this was the most vague sentence I’d ever heard.

What threw me off even more was when my mom, who was sitting next to me says, completely nonchalantly, “She’s asking if you’ve ever been to China.”
WHAT? HOW DOES SHE KNOW THAT?
Clearly, they exist on a wavelength I cannot access.

This moment was only surpassed by grandma's follow-up. “Cause Will’s boy was over there for a time, practicing.”

Who is Will’s boy? Practicing what? I’m so confused. Where am I?

“She means Will Smith’s son was in China filming the new ‘Karate Kid’ movie," mom explains.

My mother is an ambassador, bridging generation gaps.

The one bright spot was that my toothless, schizophrenic aunt has started taking her meds, so she did way less ranting than usual. My mom thought she wasn’t well because she was going into OCD overdrive in terms of planning my grandmother’s party. However, we just think she’s a party planner—for her son’s college graduation party, which consisted of about 15 people, she rented a hotel banquet hall, hired a harpist, and had a meat carver. We think she just likes to go all out, meds or no.

Anyway, I’ve missed society. How are you guys?