My Only Bitchy Cousin Is A Yankee-type Guy- The... -

My grandmother just smiled and said, “Well, bless his heart. He gets that from his father’s side.”

Bradley refused to swim because the lake had “fecal coliform counts.” He wouldn’t eat the fried catfish because it was “unnecessarily greasy.” And when I finally got him to sit on the dock with his feet in the water— just his feet —he looked at me and said, with the gravity of a Supreme Court justice, “You know, your accent makes you sound like you have a learning disability.” My Only Bitchy Cousin Is a Yankee-Type Guy- The...

Bradley had pale skin that burned if you looked at it wrong, and he wore the same navy-blue polo shirt tucked into khaki shorts every single day. He was nine going on forty. While the rest of us kids were catching lightning bugs and eating watermelon on the porch, Bradley would be inside, reorganizing my grandmother’s spice rack alphabetically. My grandmother just smiled and said, “Well, bless

The room went quiet. My mother put her hand on my arm. Bradley just looked at me for a long moment. Then he did something I’d never seen him do. While the rest of us kids were catching

“Because,” he said, “you’re the only people who tell me to shut up to my face.”