First off, he has never done anything outwardly harmful to either me or my wife.

We also enjoy his company very much both for and despite the following events.

That being said, I’ve known him for a year and he does some of the weirdest shit I’ve experienced.

I actually like him for all of his quirks. He’s clearly smart and capable, but then again so was Ted Bundy so I’m not the best judge of character.

Here’s a short list of my favourite moments witnessed by me or told to me by my wife.

On holiday in a small camp by a lake I wake up to him howling native American chants and bird calls. On his own. By the water. To nobody. At 8am. He’s white.

At dinner I asked another relative if frogs are farmed for their legs or wild caught. Carmichael (fake name) took this as an opportunity to speak at length about Vietnamese frog farms.

Lasted a good ten minutes of unbroken dialogue explaining that the frogs taste like shit because they feed them literal shit.

The whole thing was bizarre and surprisingly not racist.

He bought a new leaf blower. It’s summer. I hear it at least 5 times a day. We aren’t near any trees and his deck is at most 12ft x 6ft.

I have no idea what he’s blowing. None of us do.

My wife was hanging out with her other uncle in his cabin. Carmichael lets himself in, walks past them without a word and goes into the bathroom.

He’s in there a couple of minutes and leaves without a word. They stop him and ask what he was doing and he said “my pants were inside out”. His cabin is 30ft away.

He also has a new jet ski. Nobody knows where he got it from. He also refuses to tell anyone where it came from and acts like we just asked him what his favourite flavour of dog shit is when we try to ask. Then he fucks off on it for ages without elaborating. I respect it.

He found out that there is a ship horn on the dock. He let us know about it in the way you can imagine. It’s a horn designed to signal freighters. It is the opposite of quiet. Quiet no longer exists. I miss quiet.

At a potluck me and my wife sat down with our plates so she could introduce us to more family. He sits down with us, and asks to say grace. I play along because I’m not an arsehole, but once he says the prayer he just gets up and leaves. We are all very confused but at least my burrito was cleansed of sin.

At another dinner he asks me what my diet regime is like (I had lost some weight). He then proceeds to tell me that he’s been following paleo really strictly as I watch him buttering a roll and eating it. I am yet to ascertain if he was fucking with me or not.

Less funny and more just mental, he also lost his driving license for going on a bender and driving down the wrong side of the freeway. My theory is he has the jetski because rivers don’t have lanes.

He caught a fish. I came to check it out in the fish prep hut.

He yells at me to not come closer repeatedly as if I was in grave danger.

I get closer and it’s two little bass about 12 inches each. He then shows me how to fillet it and he’s actually very good although I’m nervous seeing him with a knife.

He then chucks the guts into the river despite multiple signs saying not to because it attracts otters. I like otters. I’ll give him more fish in the future.

At the camp, a car pulls up. A woman gets out with her baby.

Carmichael takes the baby into the lake and baptises it and hands it back to the woman. The woman leaves. None of us know who she is and Carmichael isn’t a minister.

Also the lake now has fish guts in it.

He just now drove his car to the dock to go to his jetski. His cabin is 20 metres away. He sped as fast as he could. It still would have been quicker to walk.