The Nichols' Curse

My Grand Father Nichols used to sit in a large over stuffed chair directly across from the tv, I'm sure it had been a radio before there was a tv, holding a quart bottle of beer, smoking a cigar and tell us stories. Usually with his teeth in, this was determined by the amount of beer.

There were five of us. Four grand sons and one grand daughter. All good Irish lads and lass - Jimmy, Kurt,Danny, Glenn and Caren.(Kurt was named after a friend of my father who was shot down during WWII, so he lost out on a good Irish name)In descending order, starting with Jimmy, we were 15, 14, 10, 9 and 8 years old, when we first heard the story of the Nichols' curse.

Grampa said that the curse started long before our people left Scotland and then Ireland and no one knows how it started. As time goes on, he said, we'll all see through experience that it is true! It's a horrible curse - our people must have done bad things!

Each Nichols has been cursed to meet every asshole in the world!

He went on to tell us to assume that every one is an asshole until they prove personally to you that they are not. Before we got married I told my wife about the curse. She laughed. Now that she's been a Nichols for 37 years, she's a believer.

Grampa found out as a young man that our vehicles are cursed too. He said that it's as if each vehicle we possess has an "asshole magnet" in it. He left the farm to drive trolley cars and finally buses. He's seen millions!

If you've ever ridden with a Nichols you know the curse continues. Just spend a day with us and you'll meet whole families of them - big, small, nose pickers, ass scratchers, stupid ones, alien abducted ones, educated but socially dysfunctional ones, ones that think out loud with no filter, pushy ones, ones with the 50 I.Q. stare, loud ones, the female ones that have that fat belly flap thing that hangs over the front of them, very articulate ones that say nothing, stinky ones, ones that never get an order right, ones that can't make change - driving ones - that don't turn on their turn signals, ones that don't turn them off, fast ones, slow ones, lost ones, born again ones.............................................................................................................................!!!!