Uncle Fernando

Almost every Sunday uncle Fernando would take me to play football. Local village matches. He was not technically my uncle. He was the coach of our team, but I had to call him that that because he appeared at our house hat in hand and had a way of behaving that my mother called exquisite, that is to say he used to smile, was always asking everyone how they were, and often had a bouquet of flowers for my sister. Although I think he was only twenty-four, he seemed like an old man to me. He had a large fleshy nose, wore a mustache, smoked continuously, always drove too fast and ignored the stop signs. I remember that at every turn I would hang on desperately to the strap, he would look at me in the mirror, his laugh gurgling in the slimy bottom of his rotten lungs. When I wanted to take a gulp from my can of soda, he would always brake suddenly making me spill the drink down the front of my shirt.

One day, when he was with me, he was given a fine. He tried to negotiate it, but because he was not an expert in females with authority, he chose the wrong turns of phrase and the police woman doubled it. When he set off again, I think he must have forgotten that I was in the car with him. Why me, fucking bitch? Why the fuck? he kept repeating all the way back.

I was nine and I was a nerdish bookworm. You are not well versed in statistical calculations, I clarified. You drive fast every single day. According to Frequency Distribution… “

He did not understand, he interrupted me with a slap and a backhander, then another backhander and a slap, inadvertently reminding me that reversing the order of the factors does not change the result. He was in a bad mood all day, and that Sunday I had to do without the chocolate and pistachio cone that I had never missed before.

Uncle Fernando had a number of problems. His main problem was ignorance of the fundamental laws that govern the universe. His second problem was that he liked my older sister, Lisa, just eighteen years old. The third, which I had been able to verify during his exchange with the police woman, was that he could not assess how much influence a person could have on his life. The fourth was not knowing how to properly connect cause and effect. The fifth was that he did not realize that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

My sister was neither ugly nor pretty. She had two beautiful dark eyes and a gap between her front teeth which she would continually peer at in the mirror, her eyes emanating sorrow and disgust. At school she didn’t study; she had no curiosity at all regarding natural phenomena and laws of chemistry and physics. She too lived in total ignorance of the fundamental laws that govern the universe. She spent her time reading inexplicable magazines full of people kissing and with very detailed descriptions of the clothes and makeup and hairstyles of actresses and singers. When I was with her I never knew what to talk about. But more than the gap between the teeth, Lisa was obsessed with her weight. I believe that yes, she could have lost nine or ten pounds without damage, but she was not as fat as she thought. A girl like many others, not so tall but all in all well proportioned.

One day, when she was reading an article about colors that make you look more slender, I approached her and asked:

“Lisa, what does it mean unfuckable fat ass?“

She blushed, slammed her newspaper on the bed and asked me, “Gregorio! Who taught you these words?”

“Uncle Fernando. He said that you are a deluded unfuckable fat ass. What does it mean unfuckable? Fat ass I think I had already figured out.”

The following Sunday Uncle Fernando did not show up, and at last I was finally taken to go to games by Mario’s parents, who read Scientific American and and knew a lot of cool things on quantum physics, Bonobo chimpanzees, the precession of the equinoxes, and Schrödinger’s Paradox. My knowledge of the fundamental laws that govern the universe grew exponentially.