All of you know how fond I am of my Uncle Nunzio. You can imagine, then, how much it distresses me to have to issue a warning to any of you who might come into contact with him in any kind of a social setting.
At first Uncle will seem like the perfect host. He cannot do enough for you. In the first five minutes after you enter his home, Uncle will barrage you with questions. Can he get you a drink? How about something to eat?
If you answer negatively to the first two questions, he will want to know if your chair is comfortable. Before you can answer, he will be questioning whether the temperature suits your needs, and your jacket (no, you can’t hold onto your jacket because that would mean the room is too cold), please hand it over so he can hide it upstairs somewhere so that you won’t be able to leave until he tires of you.
Just when you believe the question of your comfort has been resolved, Uncle will return to the original question of whether you might have been unduly shy about admitting that you would like a drink. It is then that you realize that it will be easier to just take the drink so that he will stop asking. Yes, you say, a drink would be nice after all.
Ah, but what kind of drink would you like, perhaps some homemade wine? Not wanting to fall into a trap again, you quickly agree to accept a little wine — just a little.
Uncle then will respond by handing you a large water tumbler of his potent wine. My, that’s a lot of wine, you might make the mistake of responding, before realizing the error of your ways. You take a small sip, confident that the conversation can move on from here, when Uncle returns to the question of food. What you need is a piece of soppresatta to help the wine go down. You realize that you’d better surrender quickly or the questioning will go on, so you gratefully accept a hefty chunk of soppresatta.
You are now faced with a serious dilemma. If you finish the wine, he will insist that you must have been thirsty and will quickly refill your glass. If you don’t drink enough of the wine, he will continually coax you to do so. The same goes for the soppresatta: Finish it and there will be another deadly fat-laden chunk waiting for you. Linger over it and he will prod you to eat more.
You soon realize that you are but a pawn in Uncle’s game, which can be called "killing them with kindness." You are helpless before his onslaught. I have seen him climb up on a chair and practically force-feed an unsuspecting newspaper boy.
Health issues will not protect you. He once chased after Morris the insurance man with a cannoli, which doesn’t sound so bad until you find out that Morris is a diabetic who had a leg amputated about a year ago.
Uncle’s personal best is the time he ran down my second cousin Alphonse with a prosciutto sandwich, catching him on the platform of the subway at Broad and Snyder. Alphonse had been understandably reluctant to take the prosciutto because of his triple bypass two Christmases ago. He wound up settling for the prosciutto and a newly clogged carotid artery.
I have suggested that Uncle’s techniques might be considered by U.S. interrogators when they catch suspected terrorists. Saddam would have cracked by now if we had just let Uncle shove food and drink in his face for 24 hours. Edgar Allan Poe would have immortalized Uncle and his fiendish house of horrors. Quentin Tarantino is reportedly interested in filming the story under the title Kill Morris, Volume 1.
Someone apparently has retaliated against Uncle by placing signs on his door and on the telephone pole outside his house cautioning that visiting could be hazardous to your health. The warning is not an overstatement. Considering the age of Uncle’s circle of friends and relatives, none of us can be considered without some sort of dietary problem.
It is Uncle’s evil genius that he is able to find just the right food or drink that is your worst nightmare. His easiest victims are recovering alcoholics and weight watchers, but the diabetic with one leg has to rank right near the top. Alphonse confided in me that he is considering having his lips sewed shut before he visits Uncle again.
My worst fear is that Uncle Nunzi will resort to technology to subdue his victims. Next time I find Alphonse in Uncle’s house, he might be wearing a feeding tube and strapped to a chair.
