“We’ve become very midwestern,” says my sister, Christina. “It’s disturbing.”

My brother, Frankie, is convinced it will pass, and normal volume will return. Frankie just finished his second year of college and works selling time-shares in the Bronx to really, really stupid people—because anyone who would buy a time-share in the Bronx has got dog intelligence, at best.

“You can’t pass up a deal like this,” Frankie tells them. “It’s a full-service resort—and subway convenient.” One thing I can say about Frankie: He could sell anything to anyone. He’s the number-one salesperson at Bronxe Pointe Vacation Villas, so I figured he could tweak Mom just enough to get her aboard the Plethora of the Deep.

“I’m not a miracle worker,” was all Frankie could say.

I convened that evening with a few of my friends in my attic, which had become a hangout spot in our neighborhood on account of the little attic window has a very revealing view of Ann-Marie Delmonico’s bedroom. This was not something I advertised or took advantage of much, but word got around anyway. What also got around was that Ann-Marie Delmonico’s attic window has a very revealing view of my bedroom, too. For reasons that should be obvious, both Ann-Marie and I now follow a strict closed-curtain policy. It’s what you call a mutual understanding, like the way most nations, except the crazy ones, promise not to nuke each other.

That being the case, any view from my attic is entirely in the imagination of the viewer. Which leaves my friend Howie out in the cold, since his imagination is a field of tumbleweeds, without even a breeze to make ’em roll.

So there we were in the attic, me, Ira, Howie, and this new guy, Hamid, all of us comparing and contrasting various complaints we had about our parents. While the others seemed to have plenty of gripes, I only had one at the moment: my mother’s inconvenient cruise-a-phobia.

“That stinks, right?” Hamid said when I told him. “My father hates flying, so we never go anywhere we can’t drive. I’ve never even met half my relatives, right?” Hamid ends most of his sentences with “right?” as if he needs to double-check with you to make sure he actually has an opinion.

“You don’t know how lucky you have it,” Howie says. “Not meeting my relatives is not an option, and there’s no end to it not being an option.”

Ira, by the way, was videotaping the whole thing. He had taken to making a video log of his entire waking life and then editing it down to webisodes that he posted online. At the last count, they’ve been viewed twice, both times, I think, by him.

“I’ll get more people watching once I get to Israel,” Ira said. “People like controversial places.”

“When are you going?” I asked.