Hello, I'm Swabby, the Cultured Cousin

Allow me to introduce myself. I am Swabby, the long-lost triplet cousin to Sibby and Sobby.

Unlike my uncouth cousins who are looking for, respectively, The Truth and The Pudding, I on the other hand am looking for The Couth. You know, refinement and sophistication.

I'm not trying to be insulting, but but both of my unwashed cousins are anti-culture, anti-intellectual, anti-Goethe simpletons.

They probably think brie is something you use to clean your whitewalls.

They probably think an etude is a Honda subcompact.

How did I get to be so intellectually and culturally superior to my nitwit cousins who I share substantial genetic material with?

Simple. Unshielded nuclear power.

Back in the early 1960s, I served as a mechanic's mate aboard the U.S.S. Nautilus, one of the first submarines in our nation's nuclear navy. I was the nuclear engineer's "gopher." Unfortunately, or perhaps, in retrospect, fortunately, Radioactive Chief was my CPO and he didn't believe in even the limited safety precautions we were supposed to take in managing the ship's reactor.

He just kept mumbling something about "Radiation is for pussy pinkos! Get closer and screw the lead suit."

Thus, because of exposure to massive doses of radiation, my substandard DNA that I share was Sibby and Sobby was transformed into super-human, or at least, more normal, human DNA.

Thus, instead of loving Spam as I did as a kid growing up with my cousins in rural Davison County, I liked quiche post radiation. Instead of loving country music, I now appreciate classical music. Instead of being unable to spell, I learned how to use a dictionary and even--perish the thought!--a thesaurus.

And thus, post radiation, I was in Search of the Couth.

That's not to say that I didn't enjoy my rather proletarian and brutish childhood with my two "special cousins." My first exposure to "nuclear" power was described quite nicely by Cousin Sobby.

I particularly remember attending Sunday school at our small rural, nondenominational church where Sibby, even as a kid, kept trying to tell our teacher Ms Johnson that some kid in Yankton by the named of Epp or some similarly unAmercan name was the spawn of Satan and would spread Secular Humanism across the land.

We all laughed because we didn't know about the dangers of Secular Humanism yet but I guess we should have paid closer attention to Cousin Sibby. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Anyway, you've probably gathered that things among us cousins has been a little strained throughout the years. While I think my cousins Sibby and Sobby are perfectly happy to howl at the moon and engage in pointless blog posts, I do love them dearly.

Blood--even irradiated blood--is thicker than water.

So, in the coming days and weeks, I will try and bring my feuding but well-intentioned cousins closer together while I also try to bring culture to the rest of you lumpen proletarians who don't know the difference between Bob Schwartz and Franz Schubert.

The photo above is me late in my Navy days. I am Swabby and a swabby.