Sean Webb

Cheapskate Tim

                         I am sitting at the tiny kids table with my brother and my cousins. The noise of the family chatting and wine glasses clinking is deafening and the smell of my grandmas food it mouthwatering. My two youngest cousins are being respectable and not making a racket or causing a mess, basically being good human beings, but the oldest cousin is being a bit of a nuisance to me and my brother. Her name is Samantha and she is a year younger than me but she is acting like she’s at least four years younger than me at all times. I usually don’t find this a problem or I just ignore her if I do but today she is being a new kind of annoying. Besides Samantha being annoying on purpose, up to this point it had gone without incident. That is until I accidently spilled my drink and drop or two went into my brothers potatoes. Not really a big deal, right? I thought so too, but then Samantha chimes in “Oh so we’re spilling drinks now?” and proceeds to spill my brother’s drink into his food, soaking it through.

                         My brother and I looked at each other in disbelief while Samantha shrieked with laughter. Her parents are in the other room so they weren’t paying any attention. My brother got a murderous look in his eyes and opened his mouth to yell at her, but before he could she poured salt in his food. He sits there seething in utter silence for a few seconds then coldly says “Well it looks like this is ruined.”

                         I’m relieved that my brother didn’t strangle her and her gets up to throw his food away and I follow him to talk to him. When we get there my uncle Tim is nearby and sees my brother about to dump his ruined food in the trash and yells “Wait! You can save that!"

                  My brother looks at him in disbelief and says “Tim, my potatoes are have absorbed my drink and my food in sitting in two inches of salty sparkling grape juice, what are you talking about?”

                  Tim grabs the plate from him and drains the juice out leaving a sad soppy pile of overly salty food and hands it back to my brother with a look of great accomplishment and a smile on his face and says “Look, I fixed it!”

                   At this point my brother and I look at each other in utter astonishment and Tim leaves he room. We just start cracking up and I say with tears in my eyes “I knew Tim was cheap, but that was next level stupid.”