After all this talk of Wee Aunt Fern, you may be asking yourselves, was there an Uncle Fern. Well, yes there is. Uncle Otto.
According to family legend, he was a strapping young man, full of vim and vigor and madly, passionately in love with the headstrong Fern. However, when the call came for volunteers to World War II, he up and enlisted, much to his fiancees disgust, errr, dismay. Some say Otto returned a changed man. Oh, Fern and Otto married right enough. But the brash young man was never the same and rumors have it, he has never smiled from the day he married Fern.
Of course, we cousins have our own theories. On a dare, we've hidden around corners and listened in to private conversations. But nothing doing. We've even told our funniest jokes. He'd chuckle, but never smile. Uncle Otto is not a dour man. Even living with Aunt Fern, the bastion of all that is right and wrong hasn't soured him on life. But he just won't smile. Even Uncle Bob smiles!
The mystery was solved for us one dark and stormy night, when Uncle Otto decided to keep company with Uncle Bob and his bootleg whisky. Aunt Fern was away over night at a Ladies Prayer Retreat and for once deemed that the Uncles could look after us.
We waited until loud snoring was coming from the room Uncle Otto shared with Aunt Fern. We four girls tiptoed into the room, barely daring to breathe. Finally, we understood our Uncles' reluctance to smile and eat taffy; for sitting on the bedside table was a glass of water and inside was a handsome set of the whitest set of false teeth you can ever imagine. Vanity, thy name is Uncle Otto!
The four of us froze and without a word ran from the room. Once we reached our room, Katie immediately dove under her bed for the cache of photos she had stashed. There we did a forensic comparison that would have done an FBI agent proud. Early photos of Otto showed a very handsome young man with a slightly crooked smile. Not the perfect pearly whites we had seen floating in the water. Isabella was snorting with laughter and I was shaking my head. Uncle O. must have lost his teeth in the War, and had to wear the dentures now, but what was the big deal? But as Scarlet and Kate pointed out, Fern was probably the big deal. She would have rather had the slightly snaggle toothed, but handsome Otto who stayed at home, over the brave war-hero Otto with the perfect grin.
This type of circular logic was so typically Fern, we four nieces just shook our heads and made a pact, just to love whomever we would love, crooked teeth or no.
But it never stopped me from offering Uncle Otto caramels, evil beast that I am. I think Katie wasn't much better. Heaven only knows what Scarlet and Isabella got up to. Other cousins may have made the same discovery over time, but we four never told. It was Uncle Otto's little secret.
Love
Kennedy
