My sister has always been obsessed with military men. I’m sure there’s some offensive term for it, but fortunately I don’t know it. She and her friends would hit bars near the bases and do their best to come home with an officer.

They never came home with an officer.

The first man she did bring home was an army grunt from Louisiana who referred to himself for some reason as a “coon ass”. He was sort of sweet, I thought, and quiet, but extremely stupid. My sister likes to be smarter than her men, and that proves to be a challenge.

He was politically engaged, and was a big fan of a Louisiana politician I had never heard of: David Duke. He went off on a rant one night at dinner about how the election was stolen from him by Jews.

My father in his understated way told him that he was a “fucking idiot “.

You would think open antisemitism would be enough to call the wedding off, but it didn’t seem to bother my sister. You can draw your own conclusions from that.

My parents spent the next few weeks trying to convince my sister that marrying this this bigot it was a bad idea.

It wasn’t until he told my sister‘s friend, who happened to be black, “you know, you’re a nice feller and all, but you do know you can’t come to the wedding, right?” That she finally called it off.

This David Duke supporter was the least bigoted man she would go out with.

Not long after she snagged another man, this time from the Air Force. He would frequently talk about how he protected our freedoms in Iraq.

He drove a forklift hundreds of miles behind the front line.

He was easily more racist than the David Duke supporter, and I immediately hated him.

After my sister introduced him to us, she asked us what we thought of him. I was only about 16 at the time so as you can imagine I was a little more reserved.

“I think he’s a racist, so you two will probably get along fine.”

She flipped out and asked my mom why I was allowed to speak to her that way. My mom‘s response was “because he is a racist.”

This wedding was not called off, and ultimately she did marry the racist, and they retreated to his native Arkansas. I didn’t have much to do with them until my sister and her two daughters were in a plane crash a few years later. Really.

I’ll get into this whole thing another time, but suffice it to say it was a cluster fuck, and she ended up getting millions from the airline. As you might expect, taking two bad people and giving them millions of dollars does not do great things for their personalities.

In case you’re wondering, yes I still fly American Airlines. Sure they almost killed my sister, but I forgive them. Maybe they’ll get her next time.

The airline cut them checks right after the crash to take care of emergencies, and her racist husband immediately went out and bought himself a giant dually pick up truck. Apparently in his tiny mind not having a stupidly huge pickup was an emergency.

After the settlement they broke ground on a custom home which, as you might imagine, was the biggest McMansion bullshit you've ever seen. We're talking true Clampett bullshit. Brick facades, monogramed shower doors, marble everywhere. Utterly stupid.

They also bought a farm, built a second house on that, bought cars, went on trips, bought jewelry. It was a non-stop spending spree. This led to a falling out with one of my brothers who she asked to help manage her money. He had the temerity to tell her this was all a bad idea.

Eventually she burned through her whole settlement, then moved on to burning through the settlements she managed for both her daughters. Sure that money was supposed to provide for their futures, but there were cruises to take.

The (not) shocking twist is her racist husband had at least one affair and they ended up getting divorced. She cut him a check and he disappeared into the night, never having anything to do with any of his three daughters again.

She got mad at us after this and was enraged that we didn't warn her what a jerk her ex was.

But we did. Repeatedly. My parents told her several times not to marry him, but my sister's memory is... selective. At least she couldn't do worse than a philandering racist right?

The next guy warned her that her ex had been stalking her. He was an ex Arkansas Highway Policeman who had noticed her ex casing her McMansion and felt the need to warn her.

Every time something suspicious happened: someone in the woods, a funny car driving by, he was there.

You might ask why a guy that disappeared into the ether would suddenly have an interest in stalking his ex who he never even contacted.

That's because, statistically, you are smarter than my sister.

My read on it is he was the one fucking with my sister and making her think she was being stalked so he could keep "rescuing" her, and sure enough it worked. He weaseled his way into that McMansion in no time.

A couple things about this dude. He told her he had to retire from the police because he had colon cancer. He also said that's why he had a colostomy bag.

Later we found out he was fired from the police. Getting fired from the police is REALLY HARD but he managed it.

He also didn't have cancer. He had Crohn's disease. I don't mean to minimize that, because it's an awful condition, but lying and claiming you had cancer is straight up sociopath shit.

My parents, again, told my sister to not under any circumstances marry this guy.

She was pregnant a few months later.

The dude is exactly what you'd picture when you think of a Highway Patrolman: buzzcut, oakleys, no discernable chin. My sister kept talking about how hot he was and got mad when I told her he looked like a King of the Hill castoff.

When pressured to go to the wedding of a man who was openly racist on social media I declined. When pressed again I said I'd go to her next wedding.

A few months after they married they came out to visit. My sister asked me to pick a place to eat. I wasn't supposed to know about his colostomy bag, so I picked a local place called Jalapeno Inferno.

I played a game with myself that night of seeing how many times I could fit the word bag into conversation. For example, to my niece:

So when you feed your horses do you use a trough or a feed bag?
For the golf team do you have to buy a bag or do they give you a bag?

This continued until my mother finally TOOK OFF HER SHOE AND THREW IT AT ME when nobody was looking.

They were supposed to come back to my place so I set up a display in my front alcove for when he arrived.

Bit of trivia: his previous ex became a Lesbian after they divorced. Like he was such a heinous man she was like “ok that’s enough men for me”, and having met the man let me just say: fair.

The son he fathered with my sister is a little version of him: sunken eyes, no chin, dull intellect. I foresee great things.

Another bit of trivia. His father died when he was 17 because he pissed someone off so badly they put 8 bullets in him.

As you might expect the marriage ultimately ended in divorce. During proceedings he had great ideas like “running into the judge” at Hobby Lobby to plead his case. That didn’t go well for him.

Since they broke up he’s gained about 120lbs and basically looks like a potato. He posts selfies from time to time and one of my guilty pleasures is stalking his Facebook and seeing what shape he’s in.

Usually it’s an oblate spheroid.

He now rents a place that literally overlooks my sister’s back yard, lending credence to my “he was the stalker all along” theory. Maybe he should put some of that energy into his failing blue lives matter branded gardening business but hey.

The next guy she hooked up with was a bouncy castle baron in Benton. Dude made his fortune renting out bouncy castles, running liquor stores and what you and I would call haunted houses, but what he calls “spook houses”, because Arkansas.

My sister would make him dinner every night and bring it to where ever he was working. She gets clingy shockingly fast and is up in people’s business. I get it when you’re 17 but lady you’re nearly 50 or something idk. I don’t care enough to know.

He starred avoiding her because he had some scintilla of sense, so you’d think her reaction would be to ask “am I coming on too strong?”

No, it was to go to his liquor stores and talk to his employees about how weird he was acting. That put an end to that.

Now she’s dating a new military man. I don’t mean to make light of this because it’s sad, but his wife committed suicide just over a year ago. He also has two small kids. So my mom told her those kids are in pain the last thing you can do is jump in there and be new mommy.

So of course within two weeks that’s exactly what she did. She was over there cooking and cleaning, the guy was taking her idiot son to the military base and buying him little fake soldier outfits, and everyone is set up for heartbreak when this all inevitably blows up.

These are just the broad strokes. There are so many more individual little fucked up things along the way.

I’ll just give you one last one. Her daughter had to be rushed to the hospital a few months back. My sister didn’t want to leave work to go deal with it.

The poor girl had a seizure and needed all kinds of tests for a whole range of scary conditions. She spent 15 minutes there then made another one of her daughters drive her home so she could go back up and spend time with her boyfriend.

Just a great human being. Phenomenal.