My Only Bitchy Cousin Is A Yankee-type Guy- The... Official

“It’s ‘fewer rolls,’ not ‘less rolls,’ Aunt Patty. Rolls are discrete units.”

“Your oregano is expired,” he announced on his first visit, holding the jar like it was a dead rat. “And the way you store your olive oil next to the stove is degrading the polyphenols.” My Only Bitchy Cousin Is a Yankee-Type Guy- The...

I finally snapped at the Christmas Eve dinner when I was seventeen. Bradley had just finished a five-minute monologue about how Southern barbecue was “conceptually inferior to a properly smoked brisket from Kansas City.” He said “conceptually inferior” about my daddy’s pulled pork. My daddy, who had been up since 4 a.m. tending the smoker. Bradley had just finished a five-minute monologue about

“Because,” he said, “you’re the only people who tell me to shut up to my face.” “Because,” he said, “you’re the only people who

“And you’re my only bitchy cousin.”

His name is Bradley, but I’ve called him “Bratley” in my head since we were nine. He’s my only cousin on my mother’s side—my only cousin, period—and he is a Yankee-Type Guy. Not just a guy from the North, mind you. He’s the stereotype . The one who thinks sweet tea is an abomination, that “bless your heart” is a declaration of war, and that any temperature above 72 degrees is a personal insult from God.