I have always had a New Year's Resolution list that looks very similar to the year before. The same promises keep resurfacing such as losing weight, exercising more, and stop scaring joggers by steering my car close to them and then jerking the wheel back after they scream. All of these resolutions are generally forgotten as quickly as they are made. However, there is always one resolution that stays locked in my pint-sized brain long after I recover from my New Year's hangover. I resolve to put myself up for adoption.

There is no doubting that there are weirdos in every family. Every family has the uncle that went to jail for streaking in a nursing home. Not to mention, there is the grandmother who couldn't hear an H-bomb go off in a Buddhist temple, but could hear Bingo numbers being called through a 364-mile wind tunnel. However, my family really does take the cake when it comes to defining dysfunctional. You see, we are 100% Polish. When you have 100% anything, there tends to be some common knots in the DNA strands. If being 100% anything makes you a purebred, then the 100% pollocks are the Chihuahuas of the purebred nationality world. We have Polish jokes, the ever present cholesterol-laden cuisine, and the Polish family. Using my family as an example, there's no doubt even Dan Quayle could deduce that someone peed in this gene pool.

After coming to monumental conclusions as these, it becomes clear that adoption into a different family must be the Numero Uno resolution on my New Year's Resolution list. This is an easy resolution to come to after enduring our family conversations around the Christmas dinner table. After the sausage extravaganza, my head is usually spinning desperately to conclude which conversation was worse. Was it when Grandpa enlightened us with the most excruciating details of watching a real cremation while the chestnuts were roasting on an open fire? On the contrary, it might have been when Papa described a co-worker's arm being sawed off by the grinding machine minutes moments before he nonchalantly asked for more kielbasa. Perhaps it was the war between the elderly ladies over whose husband needs Viagraâ the most. A painfully graphic description about size erupted during this spat. In fact, this conversation proved to be too shocking even for the au gratin potatoes, for they exploded in the oven soon after my great aunt whipped out her tape measure.

However, after the Christmas nut-fest, I come to the anti-thesis of the adoption resolution. Let's face it. After enough champagne, even I can convince myself they aren't that horrible. Therefore, the resolution gets booted off the list for something less important such as saving the rainforest or ceasing to use aerosol hairspray. This year that resolution did not get booted off. That resolution is now the proverbial equivalent to prime parking, a Commander and Chief, Prime Rib, and a Super size Extra Value Meal with an extra Rugrats toy. One little activity made the difference.

We had a New Year's Eve party.

Some spend New Year's Eve in jail after the cop found them driving backwards on a sidewalk with a blood alcohol level higher than a frat boy during RUSH week. Others spend it at the 5th cousin's twice removed house playing non-stop Parcheesi. I envy those people. My New Year's Eve was looking to be the real-life equivalent of a David Lynch nightmare.

The torture began on Christmas Eve when I was informed that the yearly family New Year's Eve shindig was not going to be held in a remote location far away from the sanity of my own domain. After the blood curdling scream emitted from my usually quiet and reserved lips, I asked quite calmly, "WHY THE @#$#$^%$&%(&)^&*^&*)(*_*&%$%@##!@#!@$#^$&^%& (&*%!!@$#^&%(*&*)*)^#%@%@#%@#$@#%$&^&&(&*()*()*)&$$!!@~@!~#~!#~!~!#@#%%$^ &^&^&*&^*(&()&*$%@#$@#$#$^%^*^(&)*(...............@~#$%^&*^&^&(&()*(q#@!@ $#$^$%^$%&^&*%&#$%@#!@#!@#@#%$%^*^*^*(&&(*(%#$@$@#%%$&%*^*(&*)&)*(%%@$@#% #$^&*&*((&)*()&*(&&* ARE YOU DOING THAT?"

The excuse I received was the holidays are a time for families to be together. I wholeheartedly agree for the majority of families. However, some families are just better off apart such as the Manson family, the Menendez brothers, and Hanson. I was hoping Father Time's watch battery would go on the blitz to prolong Doom's Day from coming. However, my prayers were left unanswered as 6:00 p.m. New Years Eve came quicker than Michael Jackson could utter, "But Officer, he didn't look 13." I paced nervously while praying and pleading for that doorbell to never ring. Perhaps, they all forgot. Perhaps, they thought it was somewhere else. Perhaps, they're tied up with their Prozacâ side effects. At this point, anything would be an acceptable excuse.

Ding Dong.

The doorbell reminded me of the doorbell in the movie House. The dread I felt toward what lurked behind that door was so great that I half expected that Night of the Living Dead music was going to be playing as I turned the door handle. As my fingers were shaking while turning the knob, I could hear the screams and strings of obscenities being muttered by my great aunt through the oak door.

"Your uncle is as useless as chicken crap on a windshield," Aunt Sheila muttered as she stomped into the house.

She flung her coat over the banister, rolled up her sleeves, and marched right into the kitchen. Moments later, Uncle Chet ambled through the door in somewhat of a Frankensteinesque style with a look on his face that resembled a stoned orangutan reading a graduate level Physics book. "What did I do?" he whispered fearfully.

No sooner did I shrug, Aunt Sheila poked her head from the kitchen. "If you don't know what you did, I'm not telling you," she sneered and vanished back behind the wall.

That line would leave the average intellectual man dumbfounded for a good minute or so. However, my uncle has always been a few potatoes short of a pierogi. He stood stupefied for a good fifteen minutes moving only when the smell of kielbasa awakened his delirium.

The next to arrive were my ultra-cheap cousins. They came fully dressed in their flea market specials, sporting clothing from every generation from the tag collar shirts to the Pilgrimesque buckle shoes. As I desperately tried to restrain a grin that was threatening to form, they handed me a bottle of generic grape juice.

"Honey," they said, "we would have brought you wine, but it is so expensive nowadays. All you have to do is let this ferment outside a little bit, and it tastes just as good at half the cost." Apparently, the words "food borne illness" means nothing on double coupon day.

Finally, the last to arrive were my grandparents. While they are surely the most dynamic and unpredictable characters in my story, there are some standards about them.

1) No matter how small you slice a piece of cake, pie, etc. for Grandpa, it will always be too big. You could project the uncut version of Schindler's List through the piece of cake and he'll still want half that.
2) No matter what the food is, Grandma will tell you it's good for you. "Mayonnaise has eggs; that's good for you!" "A Hamburger has protein. That makes you strong!" "Hot dogs have muskrat pubic hair; high in fiber!"
3) PaPa will never return anything to a store if it doesn't work, doesn't fit, etc. Instead, he tries to make use out of it by using it for something completely unrelated. This is why his 54-foot satellite dish is now a bird bath.
4) Babchi will never come over our house without something practical for us like laundry soap, paper towels, or shampoo. Coincidentally, our Bumpstead's closet looks like Mr. Clean's vacation home.

"You don't put peanut oil in cake! You use it on chicken for flavoring!"
"You can use it in some cakes!"
"No you can't, because you'll taste it!"
"How would you know? Your cake tastes like sandpaper!"
"Well at least my cake doesn't look like the Foothills of Malibu!"

"Doesn't it look like Janet Jackson?" Uncle Chet stated while pointing to a monstrously large boil on his buttocks.

Though, anyone else would have hurled at the mere site of that puss-laden monstrosity, my cousins were simply enthralled. They weren't impressed with the boil itself, mind you. They simply had visions of sugarplums dancing in their heads at the possibility of getting their relative's ass plastered across the cover of the Weekly World News.

My mother was already looking weary from the chaos when she waved everyone into the dining room. Like many families, everyone has assigned seats around the dinner table. Uncle Chet sits by the coffee machine because he's the only one who knows how to make coffee, "the good way". Aunt Sheila sits next to Uncle Chet so she can hit him with the empty coffee pot and complain the coffee is too weak. Babchi sits across from Aunt Sheila so she can argue with her, but still whisper menacing comments about Sheila's peroxided hair and Heidi Fleiss-qualified makeup to Grandma. However, Grandma is not really listening because she is too busy assuring Grandpa that she did indeed set the VCR to tape the CNN New Year special. Papa and the cheapskates usually sit next to each other because the cheapskates are so impressed with how he saves money by not returning things. Given the stars in their eyes when he turned a pair of long underwear into a handy dandy garden tool organizer, we wouldn't doubt that they have built a shrine to him providing the candles for the shrine were made from melting their daughter's Wax Lips she got for free in her Happy Meal.

The meal starts much like any other. Before the meal, there is a 15 minute argument on who is going to say grace. No one wants to say it, quite frankly because I don't think any of us knows it. It starts off like a second grader's argument.

"Well, I said it last time."
"No you didn't. I said it last time."
"Jenn should say it because she's the youngest."
"Well, I think Mom should say it because she made the dinner."

I muttered, "Uncle Chet, why don't you say grace?"

Aunt Sheila's face turned 15 shades of red and her head to start rotating like Linda Blair's.

"Your Uncle?!?!? Your Uncle??!?!?! Your Uncle needs a Thesaurus to understand the 'Our Father' and you want him to say grace?!?!?!?!" Therefore, for the sanctity of the dinner and for Aunt Sheila's neck, Uncle Chet is excluded from grace.

After we stumble through grace, which ends up being said by the person with the highest blood alcohol level, the dinner begins. My family has the knack of saying the most vile and inopportune things at the worst possible moments during dinner. You can never see these things coming. It usually starts off innocently and then turns into a smattering of syntax that would make Howard Stern cringe. That is precisely how the series of events that followed grace occurred. After the dinner was distributed, the conversation started. As the transcript for this conversation is something out of an underground film, I will delineate this conversation in a movie script-like fashion.

Mom: Can you pass the butter?
Me: I thought we switched to margarine. It's lower in saturated fat, you know.
Grandma: Butter is dairy, it's good for you.
Me: Actually Grandma, it's not really dairy.
Grandpa: I used to eat three pounds of butter a day and my heart is as healthy as a horse.
Grandma: Yeah. That's why you sound like a dying warthog when you try to get out of your recliner.
Aunt Sheila: Yeah, well at least you get some movement out of your husband (points to Chet) This thing could pass for a lamp post.

(Chet sits there drooling, halfway between a buzz and DWI)
The ugly turn begins.

Babchi: Well, you made him into that lamp post.
Aunt Sheila: Why do you say that?
Babchi: If you weren't so cheap, you would have gotten him that Via-gro.
Me: Babchi? I think you mean Viagraâ. Via-gro is bush fertilizer.
Cheapskate 1: You know Bob Dole takes that Viagraâ. But he has more than enough money to.

By this point in the conversation, my mother and I were squirming. While we are not prudes by any means, any younger generation would like to think that they were conceived by artificial insemination. This way, it is conceivable to think that your parents had absolutely no kind of sexual interaction in their entire lives. Unfortunately, our fantasy land was slowly being broken down before our eyes and we couldn't do anything to stop it.

Papa: I don't like how younger people want to take it to increase their drive. It's for people with a health problem and not for recreational purposes.
Grandma: How many girlfriends do you think these men need? I mean, do they want it ALL the time?
Mom: (nervously) Did you hear about the guy that jumped over the Niagara Falls?
Babchi: Well, I heard that it messes up your brain so that you WANT it all the time.
Mom: He went over wearing a Yogi Bear inner tube...
Aunt Sheila: Oh, please! You're full of it! How can you possibly keep it up all the time? No wife would want that!
Babchi: Some women like that! Some of these young girls are just looking for a sugar daddy that can satisfy them all the time.
Mom: (voice trembling) And he had on matching Boo-Boo water wings...

Then the question came that caused my mother and I to swallow our hearts that were temporarily residing in our throats.

Papa: How does it work?
Grandpa: Well, I just got this book called Viagra Planet.

This was the point that my head made contact with the table repeatedly.

Cheapskate 2: You paid money for that book? Why didn't you just rent it from the library? It's free!
Grandpa: Well, I was interested in it, so I thought I'd buy it.
Cheapskate 1: You know, you can bring it back after your done and they'll give you 50% back on it.
Grandma: When did you get that? Are you considering it?

At this point I started praying with my hands clenched that he wouldn't answer that question. Dear God, make him say no. Please. PLEASE!

Grandpa: Well, I was considering it.

Atheism was starting to look pretty good.

Papa: Let me see that.
Babchi: You're considering it too?

Last chance, God. I don't need that horrible memory plaguing my brain.
Please, don't put me through this hell.

Papa: Absolutely.

I hear Satanic churches are nice this time of year.

Mom: Can we please change the conversation? This is getting too much for me.

I know Mom meant well. She was trying to get us out of this living hell. However, that question caused the worst statement ever heard by human ears to erupt out of my Great Aunt's lips.

Aunt Sheila: Well, dear. I don't see why you're so uncomfortable. After all, your Uncle Chet has been taking it for months.

I don't think I've ever prayed for a coma to be bestowed on me ever in my life. Though under the circumstances, you could see my turmoil. As I looked over at Uncle Chet drooling on the new tablecloth, all I could see was a picture of Wilt Chamberlin over his head. The image was so intense that I shut my eyes and screamed. However, no one heard me because what was emitted from my uncle sounded much like an air raid siren in heat.

Not to mention, the room was flooded with a foul smelling goo.

Aunt Sheila: What the hell was that?

My uncle quickly looked behind him.

Uncle Chet: Oh no! I popped Janet Jackson!!!!

I didn't hear anything after that because I proceeded to walk into the kitchen and pound my head against the refrigerator. At that second, I was indeed ready to call Social Services and willingly put myself up for adoption. Yet, one thing stopped me. It wasn't love. It wasn't family traditions. It was Uncle Chet, himself. He was tying up the phone lines calling Ripley's Believe it or Not.

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