Chester the molester

Ok, a funny thing happened last night but I'm not sure it'll translate well if you don't personally know my uncle. I'll see if I can give you an idea. Let me start by saying that he is a very harmless man. Yes, I refer to him as the "Dreaded Uncle" but that's only because when he comes to visit he stays WAAAAAYYYY too long and can be annoying. The annoying thing isn't anything he does intentionally but it's just a myriad of things about him that I don't understand or don't like. Plus he looks odd. I don't think he's bought a new piece of clothing in over a decade. In fact I think most of what he wears dates from at least the 80s. He tends to wear a lot of my grandfather's clothes (my grandfather is dead so don't think that he's wandering around somewhere in the buff 'cause his son stole his clothes). He has disheveld hair which he cuts himself with a Flowbee (no joke). He has a full beard and walks funny because he has a bad back. He's very sheltered too. He is pretty much a shut in if you exclude his trips to the Dollar Store.

It's worth noting that when he visits, he tends to take an obnoxious amount of pictures of his grandkids (my cousin Jess' kids, Cade and Zoe). So he ALWAYS has a camera or videocamera around his neck.

Ok, now the story. Cade and Zoe are in a gymnastics program and we (me, Mom, Dad, and Dreaded Uncle) went to see them last night. All the parents stay and watch their kids and they all tend to know each other. So last night we (me, Mom and Dad) went in and headed straight to Jess & Eric and stood with them to watch. Dreaded Uncle didn't follow us but instead grabbed a chair and started taking pictures. Well some of the parents got a bit nervous. Actually I think it's weird that he didn't automatically acknowledge his daughter or her husband by going to them and saying Hi before settling in to take pictures but I guess that's beside the point.

So there's my odd looking uncle, by himself, taking a ton of pictures of little kids. One of the directors of the gym took him aside to speak to him. He finally convinced her that he was, in fact, the grandfather of two of the kids. She kind of forced him into the gym part to sit in a corner and take pictures. We suspect she wanted him out of the way of the other parents. She then came right over to us to explain what had happened. The poor girl felt bad about it until we, through our tears of laughter, assured her that she not only did the right thing but that we think he looks suspect too.

He really had no idea how creepy that whole situation looked to anyone. In his world some random guy can take pictures of 4 and 5 year olds and not think twice about it. We were later joking how much funnier it would have been if he were outside taking pictures through the windows. Instead of the gym director taking him aside we would have gotten to see the cops arrest him.