On the Highway to Helena

With strangers in Montana treating me like a friend they'd known for years, I couldn't wait to visit my Montana-based relatives. After all, we Mosiers are known for our kindness, hospitality, good looks, modesty, intellect, senses of humor, openness, creativity, money-making skills, athletic ability, brevity, and colorful use of unjustifiable adjectives.

My cousin Shane and his wife Nelma live in Helena and they do not disappoint. Shane and Nelma make the amiable citizens of Great Falls seem like callous jerks in comparison (just kidding G.F.; you know I love you) and immediately take me in as family even though they haven't seen me since I was only nine years old.

The couple has had difficulties with work in recent years, but they have managed to handle things well. Shane worked his way up to middle management through many years of hard work and determination, only to see the company he worked for fall apart. With few options in a rural Montana setting, he turned to truck driving. He has been driving the past six years, making good money, but ruing the fact that the job takes him away from home so often. It is not unusual for him to work twenty hour days, six or seven days a week.

Nelma worked as a supervisor in the same tax company for thirty years, only to find herself being undermined at every turn. The stresses of the job turned her into a person she didn't want to be, so she recently tendered her resignation. The off time has given her time to breathe, and the result is a sweet, caring, happy Nelma. She has such a wonderful disposition that I hardly believe her when she says her kids couldn't handle her attitude for another tax season.

Nelma has made her world famous Mexican egg rolls and invited her immediate family over for dinner. Her kids, both roughly my age, have kids of their own. Saige, a precocious little seven-year-old, enters the house with an expectant grin on her face.

"Where's our cousin?"

"Here he is."

Saige strains her neck to look up at me. Her grin slowly turns to a poorly hidden mix of fear and disappointment. Her younger sister, Makenna, follows her into the room and also stares up at me, a feat that seems to make her dizzy. The scene is eerily reminiscent to the point in Kindergarten Cop when the children meet Arnold for the first time.

I smile and wave, which prompts both children to slowly retreat to the nearby guest room. As Nelma carries on a conversation in the kitchen, I overhear two little voices emanating from the room.

"He's scary!"

"No he's not."

"Well...He looks scary."

Touche.

Despite their fears, the little girls approach me before dinner to show me the clown noses their mother just bought them as well as their collection of Care Bear dolls. They put the clown noses on various bears as I react in emotions ranging from amusement to astonishment to horror. The kids find this very enjoyable. When they discover that I happen to know the name of one of the Care Bears (look, I never claimed to be cool), their perception of me changes from "big, scary guy" to "giant pushover."

Before I know it, I am being accessorized with clown noses, scrunchies, and flowers. I never thought I'd be nostalgic for the time when little kids found me scary, but seven hairstyles later, it happens.

Check back tomorrow to hear how my fishing trip with Shane caused a blackout in the New York City greater metropolitan area and other fish tales.