#381 Being Fair Weather Fans

The venerable urbandictionary.com defines a fair weather fan as “A fan of a sports team who only shows support when the team is doing well. During hard times they usually bandwagon other teams. They basically have no real loyalty to the team, but still manage to get better seats than you at the game. Strangely they mysteriously vanish at the first sign of trouble.”

Keithlys love sports every year around the time of the College Bowl Games, Superbowl, NBA Playoffs and World Series. Depending on the year, they can also be crazy about soccer (when there’s a World Cup) or the sports being played at the Olympics. No matter what the sport, or how obscure the team, when the championship games of that sport occur you will be able to find at least one Keithly who claims to love the team and knew they would win ever since the beginning of the season.

Naturally, they are fans of the Lakers, Trojans (even though no Keithly has ever so much as stepped foot on the USC campus), Patriots, the US Olympic team, the Brazilian World Cup team and occasionally the Angels. No Keithly has ever rooted for the Clippers, the Raiders or the Mets.

#231 Duke

Keithlys love Duke, the King Charles Spaniel that lives with them. Perhaps a comically small extension of his previous owner, McCabe (see #284: McCabe), Duke has a personality that every Keithly, whether they admit it or not, loves. Here are some facts about Duke:

1) While he may appear stupid, the fact is that his breed was made to sit on your lap and look good—Duke is an expert at both of these duties.
2) He will try to catch every fly he sees.
3) Whenever he gets a chance, he will poop on the sidewalk instead of the grass outside.
4) Male Keithlys report a more favorable response rate with females when in public with Duke.
5) If something scares him (i.e. the vacuum cleaner), he overcomes the fear of that thing by urinating on it.
6) He elects to kill beetles by rolling on them.
7) Unlike Keithly women, he detests tall, thin men.

#339 Shaving themselves

Keithlys, and especially Keithly men, are much more likely to shave any part of their bodies than the average man. At any given Keithly function, there will be at least one pair of arms that has been shaved in the last month. Many of them also shave their chests, stomachs, armpits and backs. When they shave their legs they usually do so even higher than most girls do.

There is a Keithly whose face is the part of his body that sees a razor less than just about any other part. He routinely shaves the rest of his body but grows beards. The chief of the clan does not shave any part other than his face, but his legs have not grown hair since the 70’s. Yet another Keithly has a sizable chunk of his monthly budget set aside for purchases of Nair.

There is an old Keithly superstition that says that shaving one’s chest makes a man appear 10 lbs lighter, and that getting a tan subtracts an additional 10 lbs. While this has not been confirmed by any credible scientific or even cosmetic source, Keithlys live by this and thus are constantly shaving their bodies and tanning.

#502 Questioning Your Professional Qualifications

Because each Keithly secretly believes him/herself to be the smartest person in the world, it is no surprise that a Keithly will, when given the chance, ask you questions about your field of expertise in hopes of proving that he or she, with absolutely no training in the same field, knows more about it than you. It does not appear to matter to a Keithly how many years of education and experience you may have in the area. There are even recorded cases of Keithlys questioning a court reporter as to whether her job should even exist and taking the electric clippers right out of the hand of a hairstylist in the middle of a haircut!

This happens constantly. One can be a dietician, an accountant, a GMAT instructor, a lifeguard, a hairstylist, a commercial real-estate analyst, a guy who does stuff having to do with 401(k)’s at a large asset-management firm but is thinking about going to law school, a high school history teacher, or the Vice President of a small to mid-sized supplier to bulk-mailing companies, and find that his or her authority gained by experience in his or her field is essentially disregarded by other Keithlys.

Assuming you are a lawyer, the questioning of your credentials is likely to go as follows:

Keithly 1: A lawyer you say? In the state of Iowa, how much liquor do you have to steal for it to be a felony?
You: Um . . . well I’m really just a real estate attorney but I’m guessing in most states it would be $500 worth. But I’m not sure.
Keithly 2 (sitting at a computer): Well, according to Wikipedia, the ultimate source of all argument-settling truth in this family, they just changed it to $300 worth.
Keithly 1: Ha ha ha ha ha! Aren’t you supposed to be a lawyer? Look, Keithly #2, we’re smarter than a lawyer!
You: But, but . . .
Keithly 2: Hey, who left 19 Otter Pop wrappers under the couch?

#220 Class Warfare: The Adult Table vs. The Kid Table

Ever since there were enough members in the tribe’s extended family to require two tables, there have been two classes of Keithlys: those who sit at the adult table at family functions and those who sit at the kid table. The eldest Keithlys, who always sit at the adult table, have tried to minimize this disparity using the same “separate but equal” argument found in Plessy v. Fergusen. The weakness of this argument is found upon comparison of the solid oak adult table and chairs to the fold-up plastic table and old, wooden benches of the kid table, and the fact that when Keithlys have a limited amount of fancy flatware, the kid table always ends up with the plainer decorations.

In recent history token gestures have been made by the adult community to reach out to those who have been deemed “kids” well into their 20’s and 30’s, but the general consensus among the latter is that these efforts are too little, too late. When they are presented with the choice, they defiantly elect to eat at the kid table.

If you are ever at a Keithly family function, you will be given a choice of where you would like to sit. Do not take this decision lightly, as it is a politically charged one that will ingratiate you with one faction and alienate you from the other. Consider the following pros and cons to both options:

Pros to the adult table: Availability of the better food, most of which will never make it to the kid table; prestige.
Cons to the adult table: The conversation may not be well suited to your taste, depending on whether you are older or younger than 55; also, this table has developed a highly complex system of passing food using an intricately timed pattern of clockwise rotation, which some Keithlys have lived decades without mastering.
Pros the the kid table: Ability to say just about anything you want; ability to eat dessert before dinner without being noticed.
Cons to the kid table: Never knowing what you are missing at the adult table foodwise. In one case, two separate meals were prepared, one for each table. While the author of this article was at the kids table and does not know what the other half of the family ate, he assumes it was something better than macaroni and cheese with tomatoes and a side of frozen corn.

#436 Doing Laundry in La Mirada

In a tradition that has been compared to a trek to the Ganges River by a Hindu or a ceremonial trip to Mecca by a Muslim, a Keithly will take any opportunity to do his or her laundry in the machines at the Keithly capitol located La Mirada, California regardless of where they currently reside.

Some Keithlys, having washing machines and dryers available at several much closer locations, wash their clothing in La Mirada every single week. Others who live in other states bring full loads of laundry on their flights when they visit, even if this means that they (or their employer) must pay several extra dollars for the extra baggage weight. So great is the desire of a Keithly to wash their clothing in these particular machines, that sometimes Keithlys must wait hours to do their laundry, even if they happen to live in the house where these machines reside. Such is their reverence for clothing that the Keithlys have filled an entire room in the house with nothing but couches to hold their clean and dirty laundry.

While its origin is unknown, this phenomenon is puzzling at best considering the following drawbacks to these machines: 1) the washing machine no longer dispenses bleach correctly, but pours it straight onto the ground, 2) throughout decades of recorded history, there has not been a single example of a male Keithly cleaning out the lint trap, and 3) the dryer is unable of drying towels properly in less than three cycles at the maximum time.

#351 Creating Offensive Nicknames

Regardless of your name, or the Keithly’s age, there is a 98% chance that a Keithly will come up with an offensive nickname for you. Therefore, do not be surprised when your name is cleverly altered into, alliterated with or rhymed with a body part, a bodily function, or something else with an unflattering connotation. There have even been cases of Keithlys using standard rules of English pronunciation to make last names resemble vulgarities. Some Keithly nicknames, however, are either neutral or even positive in their connotation, although these are extremely rare. Keithlys have even composed musical ballads with several verses dedicated to mocking somebody’s name.

Keithly matriarchs are known for being more bothered by this custom than any other demographic, but have ultimately been unable to end it in spite of oft repeated threats of banishment of perpetrators from a clan dinner and even, in some well-documented cases, physical violence.

If a Keithly ever calls you by a name other than your given name, do NOT say anything to the effect of “Gee, I’ve never heard that one before.” If you do, the Keithly(s) will continue inventing names for you until they come up with something that you really never have heard before and hope to never hear again. Unfortunately, you will absolutely hear it again. Please keep in mind, these habits are so ingrained that reminding a Keithly of his/her age and/or church calling will do nothing to stop the trajectory of the name-calling habit once it has begun. If you are dating a Keithly, you will eventually be forced either to end the relationship or to accept that at some point some Keithly will convert your name to something considerably less dignified, that a majority of Keithlys will find it inordinately funny, that it will remain for years, and that there is little or nothing you can do about it. Some examples of this Keithly creativity, and the gender of the corresponding victim, are found below*:

T-Bone (F)
V-Nizzle (F)
J-Nizzle (F)
Farty (M)
Farta (F)
The Fartins
Steven (F)
Scotty Potty (M)
Weiner (F)
P-Boy (M)
Natalie Patalie Poop Stain on the Rug (F)
Natalina Patalina (F)
Bratalie (F)
Fatalie (F)
A-Dogg, B-Dogg, C-Dogg, etc., all the way to Z-Dogg (F)/ (M)
Ian The Love Mach-Ian (M)
Peein’ Ian (M)
Ian the European (M)
Ian the Korean (M)
Ian the European who speaks fluent Korean (M)
Mr. Cl-Ian (M)
Tenacious P (M)
Tenaish (M)
Anna Banana (F)
Horny Loser (M)
Chives (M)
Snodgrass (M)
Snot (M)
Snotty (M)
Scooter (M)
Old Yeller (F)

*Note: for the sake of the innocent, nobody’s actual name is included