BEAUTY SHOP TALK

by

Vicki Charmaine Bunch

No sooner do I get the barbecue stains from my family reunion out of my Capri pants than it's time for the Bunch reunion. Say what you will about the Nedwalders, at least they are living in the 20th century. We speak in sentences, shave under our arms and eat our potato salad with a fork or spoon. Members of the Bunch family are practically cavemen--which might be intriguing if you were an anthropologist. Otherwise, it's just a nuisance.

While most Americans observe a few family traditions, the Bunch family performs elaborate rituals they brought across the county line in the 60's. Hog calling, bobbing for potatoes and a hair-pulling contest establish the family hierarchy for the coming year. Thank goodness they take it easy on my husband Sonny, the baby of the family.

"That hog call was real good," his sister Louise says, in response to his half-hearted squeal.

His brother Faron barely pulls Sonny's hair at all, gingerly fondling what's left of it with a sad expression on his face. "Sonny's runner-up in the hair pulling," he declares. They treat Sonny the way cavemen might treat a pet monkey or a young chimpanzee. Which just encourages Sonny to act like one.

The role of the head of the clan has passed between Sonny's three brothers since the death of their father in a mechanical bull-riding accident 11 years ago. If only Paw had remembered to hold on, but he was showing off, in typical Bunch male style. It made a great photograph, however, which the family sold to the bull's manufacturer for the cover of his brochure. The money was enough to buy Paw the fancy headstone he always wanted.

This year's patriarch is Sonny's brother Earl who can lift a grown man with his bare teeth. Earl has decreed that everybody has to line up their pickup trucks so Sonny can try to jump over them on his Moped. Sonny idolizes Robbie Kneival. Even if he crashes, it will be better than last year when he bungee jumped off his mother's house and landed on the driveway.

Although Sonny's pretty good at anything that gets him airborne, the things he's best at are climbing trees and eating bananas. The county made us sign some papers saying Sonny wouldn't climb trees before they would let us use the park. But there's nothing that says he can't throw fruit--which is almost as much fun as far as Sonny's concerned.

Doctors say losing his father on the mechanical bull is what made Sonny so monkey-like. I used to think it was kind of cute that way he loped around with his hands tucked into his armpits. Now I'm beginning to wonder.

Is Sonny the missing link? A lot of times he gets into my things in a mischievous way, like when Cheetah puts on lipstick in the old Tarzan movies. And he's smart like Cheetah too, having run for help on countless occasions, like when I fell into a pit and there was already a lion in there. And when I'm frolicking near a waterfall--oblivious to the crocodile swimming toward me--Sonny starts jumping up and down, going "Ooga ooga ooga ."

The Bunch reunion is a chance to experience early man in all his primitive splendor. It would probably be pretty interesting to an anthropologist. Otherwise, it's just a nuisance.