My Sister-In-Law, God Love Her

Mary(The names have been changed to protect the truly unaware) is my sister-in-law. She's what I privately call "High Maintenance Dippy", that is, she has a lot of problems, a lot of baggage, a good heart and the best of intentions but thought processes that are unusual. I would say it is probably more accurate to put her name in place of the word "blonde" in just about any blonde joke ever invented than to use the original description.

To whit: One day she was talking about her brother and mentioned he doesn't have an apartment any more--he'd saved up his money and now lived in a condom. This is true. I know it sounds like a joke but I swear to you on my mother's grave it's true.

Just yesterday my brother took a police officer on a tour of the house we live in. They had received a call from 911, asking them to check out the place, because they had received a 911 call from our address(it's a fourplex, with my brother, his wife and 2 sons in one part, my sister and her hubby in another, me in another, and Mary and my brother in the last part) with no response on the part of the caller. Turned out it was a butt-call--she had sat on her cell phone, which had, apparently in a panic, called 911. She was anxious because 911 had called her back to tell her the police were on their way, and she not only couldn't figure out how they had got her number, but didn't know who might have done such a stupid thing as prank-call the emergency phone service.

But my all-time favorite was when she was talking to my sister. She had been relating a story about someone who had done wrong to a co-worker, and had been found out. She said, of the co-worker, "I'm telling you, Anne (name changed to protect the etc. etc.), she stared at that gossip, and if daggers could kill..."

My sister, who is never one to let such a comment go, waited a moment or two, and then replied, "Well, Mary, In fact, daggers can kill."

Mary looked at my sister in lofty scorn, I kid you not. Then she said,

"It's just an expression, Anne."

Anne, who as I said before etc. etc., waited a moment or two, and then said, "No, no...an expression is 'If looks could kill', or 'She looked daggers at him'; "If Daggers Could Kill" is a fact."

Mary changed the subject, but only because the language had changed for her and she didn't understand. We hope she's a part of our family forever.