Polly

Usually when we say something's "a scream" we mean it's funny. When I say that my mother's side of the family was a scream, I really mean "a scream"!!
They were a mixture of the loudest, most abrasive male and female voices in the world. As if that wasn't bad enough, they used their loud voices constantly. The "meeting of the loud" often took place at my great aunt's house. We called her meemah Haikah. I think meemah meant "aunt". I don't know what language it was...maybe Russian. My grandmother had eighteen brothers and sisters so there were a lot of meemahs. They all looked like the same old lady wearing the same house dress. The old Russians weren't big on getting all dolled up. They were, however, big on yelling. The noise at my great aunt's house was deafening. A war could have broken out, and we wouldn't have heard the bombs dropping. Be that as it may (whatever the hell that means), it was one of my favorite places. This was because of the parrot. Meemah Haika's son Morris was a surgeon who had successfully operated on his friend's parrot. The friend turned this mean-spirited bird over to cousin Morris, who then gave him to his mother, the afore-mentioned meemah Haika. The bird, being mean and loud, fit in beautifully. They weren't big on originality, so they named him Polly. He quickly learned everyone's name and would tell them each to shut-up at the appropriate time. Of course, they didn't listen. He also liked to scare people as they came in the door. It was a poorly lit hallway, and people couldn't see him. He would yell "Up against the wall!" People would think they were being held up (it was a dangerous neighborhood). We were sometimes lucky enough to bird-sit when my aunt went away. We would put his cage in our kitchen. He learned our dog's name and would repeatedly call him. The dog would come running into the kitchen and look around confused. Polly loved that game. He was used to having toast and coffee in the morning and would start screaming for it at 6:00 AM. He was the most entertaining pet I ever knew. It's amazing that personality traits that are so obnoxious in people could be so cute in an animal. Now there's an intelligent design!