Before I left Wisconsin, my grandparents basically had me lay a claim on anything I wanted in the house “before we die and your awful Aunt Julie comes in here and takes everything, you know how she is.”

Yes, yes I do know that the second they die she’ll have the house stripped of everything of value, razed, and sold before their bodies are even cold. It still doesn’t mitigate the awkwardness of walking through someone else’s life to pick out the things that I like–the 1970s zodiac barometer, the ridiculously heavy statue that it takes two people tag-teaming to lift, the china even though I’m not sure it’s a pattern I’d choose for myself but because grandma is so anxious for me to have it–because it acknowledges death in a way that I’m completely and utterly uncomfortable with.

Grandpa, bless his heart, tried to mitigate this awkwardness by pressing some metal turtles into my hands. “There’s a boy and a girl. Want to know how to tell them apart? Turn them over.”

I’d seen these sitting on the bookshelf near the Encyclopedia Britannica for YEARS and never suspected a thing. Yes, I brought them home. Apparently dick jokes are not just my stock and trade, they’re my legacy.