I spent the better part of the afternoon (after the prerequisite unemployment job application stuff) trying to clean up the audio and rotate a video that Pickles sent to me. She shot it with her cell phone, but with all the laughter and loud talking over one another the audio is pretty much unusable. I can't even decipher enough of it to write a transcript, which is too bad...because it looks like the conversation is/was hilarious. It started out with something about garlic, then bad breath (or maybe breasts?), then a story about a man whose name sounded like "Tom McCrackin"(?) ...and then at the end a story of perhaps...my cousin running over my aunt in my aunt's jeep in an accidental parking break failure?
Here's a quick clip and mini-transcript of the parts that I understood. The woman in the middle of the screen is my Aunt Helen, on the right side sitting on a stool is my cousin (my aunt's younger daughter) Heather, and in the left corner is my other cousin (her older daughter) Deslyn. One of the voices in the background is Pickles and the other sounds like Remy. The audio is pretty loud & distorted, but this is the best that I could get it :-/ (You could probably turn the sound off and just watch my aunt's wild gesturing)
Pickles: Oh I remember that story
Remy: unintelligible
Aunt Helen: Oh!
Remy: You got run over by your own jeep?
Heather: She did *points to Deslyn*
unintelligible cackling, plus denial from Deslyn- something about the parking break not being up?
Aunt Helen: She run me over
more unintelligble laughter - car rolling?
Aunt Helen: When I do get de jeep tah stop, I jus say "Lord don't let nottin be parked unda dis jeep, jus let de jeep stop!" An' it come to ah stop an I jump in an me foot went straight out...
The rest is pretty much stuff I can't figure out, something about being at Bob Howard, the local Chevrolet dealer and how no one came to help her. I think?
Anyway, Aunt Helen is hilarious and her Trinidadian accent makes just about anything that comes out of her mouth a laugh riot. She always reminds me of how my mom used to tell stories, because she and my mom were basically like twins. Hopefully, Pickles practices with her cell phone before Christmas so I can post a decent video of Trinidadian holiday good times. Note to Pickles: You can send me some test video and I can tell you if it'll work or not. Also maybe you can fill in the rest of the story in the comment section of what happened.
There was also a second video with it, but just as unsalvageable...but I took a screencap of it (see top of the post). The tall guy in the sombrero on the left side of the screen is my Uncle S. (he's also my godfather). He wore the sombrero because his contribution to the meal was spanish rice (according to Pickles). The guy on the right side in the bowler hat who looks like a black Charlie Chaplin in an Adidas shirt is my oldest brother Darron.
...and that's just kind of a taste of how the holidays are in my family (at least my mom's side).
They're actually a lot of fun.
Comments
The Jeep story: Mom & Helen went to Bob Howard so Helen could get something done. Mom mentions the Jeep is rolling forward. Helen yells, "Oh Geed" then chases it thru the parking lot & into the street as it heads for the cemetary across the street. She finally catches it & "mash de brakes" before it crashes into the cemetary. I don't think she got ran over in the story, but I'll ask her to retell it at Christmas.