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2002-07-29 | 10:15 a.m.

My cousin Tanya always had her nose in the air. It wasn't entirely her fault, because she had that sort of nose to begin with, but she egged it on. She is older than me by five or six years, something like that, and she was nice to me in her own way, but we had almost nothing in common. I couldn't fail to notice that she always dressed perfectly and dated rich young men. One of them even had his own airplane.

I didn't go to her wedding, wasn't invited, but I heard it was a swank affair. For some reason, for years I was under the impression that she married a doctor. Someone must have told me he was a doctor, because where else would I have gotten that idea? Anyway, it turns out he wasn't a doctor. I also remember hearing that he didn't want her to work, even though she wanted to, which was horrifying to me, immersed in my budding journalism career.

I spent years imagining that Tanya was living the life of a chauvinist doctor's wife.

At some point my stepmother revealed the truth. No, he wasn't a doctor. And yes, she did work (though he might still be a chauvinist). Together they ran some sort of car detailing shop. What? And though they had a very nice house, they weren't rich by any means.

And now I find out that they LOST the car detailing biz and had to sell their house and are living in a mobile home in South Carolina! You have no idea what an assumption readjustment this has been for me, personally. I don't have anything against my cousin, I really don't, and for that matter I don't have any sincere revulsion toward mobile homes. But Tanya, in a mobile home, is just mind-boggling. You have to understand that she was like minor royalty all through my childhood. She was always so ... "hoity toity," my stepmother put in, a little unkindly. I feel almost guilty about it, as if it should really be me living in the mobile home, and not her. I'm looking at myself and I see that I am wearing a chili-stained T-shirt that I've had on for two days. Clearly, there has been some sort of cosmic mixup in Copesville. Poor Tanya.

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