La Famiglia d’Eri

The Eri family is an interesting one. Rose is the mother. She’s not the eldest, though. Her great uncle, who was named the pope, was too proud of his family to change his surname, so he used his holy power to sway the cardinals to let him stay an Eri. He was officially named Pope Eri XVIII, and was the first American pope. He found it especially hard to live in the Vatican since he didn’t speak Italian and wasn’t really a Catholic.
The three surviving cousins are Chris Chin, Judy Ism, and Cathy Lick. People call her Cath. The whole family was atheistic, except Pope Eri. The Pope resented his family’s lack of faith, but was tolerable because of his holy wisdom.
Rose had two sons, Sal and Cal. Sal became an economics professor. For unknown reasons, he always had an underlying fascination with money. He stashed much of it away while still spending voraciously. He had more money than his great-great uncle, who incidentally owned Vatican City!
Cal was a dietary expert. He helped insecure hundred pound white girls from Los Angeles to be insecure ninety pound white girls from Los Angeles. The job was high paying, though. Despite his expertise, he always got the words “calorie,” “carbohydrate,” and “cholesterol” mixed up.
Poor Rose never got any attention from her rich relatives. She always wanted to be a florist because of her first name, so she took a loan and opened a small shop. Since her store specialized in internet sales, she named it “idaisy,” which got her in trouble with the Apple company. Her first store was opened right next to a UPS shop, so shipping was incredibly easy. Only problem was, nobody took her store seriously, because when you looked at it from a distance, the UPS store and Rose’s shop together spelled out “upsidaisy.”
Then, there was Rose’s third son that nobody liked to talk about. His name was Rob Eri. He was jailed for being a thief. He was helping his friend Juan Ted rob a bakery when he stole a car. The cops chased them down for seven hours. Now, they share a jail cell in prison, rotting away slowly, being forgotten by the world.
Sal had a son last year. He was a big Star Wars fan, so he wanted to commemorate the film by naming his son after one of the characters. He named his son Dack. Little Dack loved fruit juice. Every time grammy Rose would try to feed him some vegetable puree, he would spit it out and demand by whining that he wanted fruit juice “dis inssant!” Nobody could determine the source of the little guy’s passion.
Not to be outdone, Cal went ahead and had a baby with one of his patients. The baby was an accident, so the Pope suggested the baby be immediately baptized and named after a biblical character. Nobody knew, of course, that the pope knew nothing about Catholicism.
Cal always liked the story of Lot since Lot’s wife was turned to salt. He wished the same of the girlfriend who was his baby’s mother. So, Cal’s child was named Lot under his Great Great Uncle’s supervision. Lot’s great great great uncle smiled down at him as he was thrust under water. Little Lot didn’t like cold water, so he peed on his uncle out of fright. The headline the following day read, “Pope urinated upon.”

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