Family Ties (and Knots)

We’ve got lots of family ties in this office. V-Shaped Mortgage Banker Will is brothers with one of the founders of the company, half of us go to church together, so we’re like, church family, and my Boss Chad is married to our processor, Rachelle. It’s like the Cleavers in here, I tell you.

Speaking of family…

Something unfortunate occurred over the weekend. It involved me, my mother-in-law, and some questionable judgment on my part.

It began when, on Saturday night, I suggested we watch a movie. My in-laws were visiting from their farm in Alabama and my husband and I had been busy showing them around Houston for most of the day. While Benson pulled our Amazon account up, we discussed what type of movie we were in the mood for. “I could do a thriller,” I said, “or a comedy, or a rom-com, or…” when my mother-in-law asked, “What’s that Fargo?” pointing to a thumbnail on the screen.

Now listen, folks. Fargo happens to be one of my favorite movies of all time. Back when we all had Myspace accounts, I had Fargo listed as one of my favorite movies (well, I suppose I still do have it listed there because who in God’s creation knows how to take a  Myspace account down?).

If you’ve seen the movie, you very well might have already stopped reading, finally realizing that I am a horrible, bloodthirsty person with no soul. I’d say that’s fair. It’s a rather gory movie.

Okay y’all, but here’s the thing. It’s been a few years since I saw the film (I’m trying to make it sound more sophisticated using “film”), and I apparently had forgotten a few key scenes. So when my MIL asked about the film, I replied:

“Oh, Fargo is one of my all-time favorite movies. It’s kind of gory and has some bad language, but it doesn’t have, like, nudity or anything.”

Somebody stop me from talking before I tell a group of toddlers that they’ll love Friday the 13^th.

And so, my MIL, thinking me a somewhat rational human being (silly MIL!), agreed to watch Fargo with us.

As it turns out, I kind of misremembered Fargo. Specifically, the following scenes:

• The scene where the two killers make whoopee with prostitutes in a hotel room on side-by-side beds.
• The scene where this Native American guy beats a naked man with a belt. Yep, forgot about that one.
• Every scene that uses the f-word, which was every single scene. I’m not making this up (I looked it up) the f-word alone was used 76 times.
• The scene where another prostitute (we’re up to three ladies of the night now, people) runs down a hallway. Naked.
• The scene in which one of the murderers chops up a body with wood chipper and blood spurts out onto the snow.

Please note that I watched these scenes while sitting on the couch next to my mother-in-law who has never uttered a curse word in her life and feeds homeless people in her spare time. At one point I looked over at her and she had a blanket over her head. I’m serious. I enlisted Hottest Mortgage Banker in Texas Hayley’s help in reenacting the scene.

Me: “Hey Hayley, can I take a picture of you with a blanket over your head?”

Hayley: “What?”

Me: “Here, just put this on your head, okay?”

Hayley, as my mom-in-law.

The day after the incident I tried to play it cool and made sure to dote on my husband in front of the in-laws so they’d see that though I am psycho sick when it comes to cinema, I at least love their son very much. But then I ruined it after dinner when I joked, “Hey – y’all want to watch another violent porn?” (Benson thought it was really funny. The others, not so much.)

So anyway, folks, please learn from my lapse in judgment and watch Fireproof or something when your mom-in-law visits. And if not, just keep a blanket handy. And if any of you have any awkward in-law stories of your own, I’d love to hear them. Now, off to rent Texas Chainsaw Massacre so I can watch it with my grandparents come Thanksgiving.