The Near-Death Experience That Shaped My Humor

A werewolf chased me when I was seven years old. I don’t know where it came from. All I knew was that it was right there in my grandpa’s house. My mom left me there for a few weeks with my grandpa and my youngest aunt.

My grandpa would go in the mornings to work, and my aunt would take care of me.

The day the werewolf attacked me, my aunt left the room, and then the werewolf came in.

It chased me around the house for what felt like two hours, but it was probably no more than five minutes. Then the monster peeled his face to reveal my aunt laughing uncontrollably.

I was seven. I didn’t know if my aunt was my aunt or a werewolf underneath. It clearly marked me because I can’t think about it without my heartbeat accelerating a bit.

Like almost all Colombian families, my family is driven by a sense of propriety, but behind closed doors, they have what’s known as ‘humor pesado’ (which literally translates to heavy humor but means dark humor).

This same aunt eventually became a mom.

One time, my sister was so taken by how cute my baby cousin was that she gently bit his cheeks with her lips; just imagine someone who lost the teeth to gum disease trying to eat a peach like that, and that will give you an idea of what my sister did.

But my cousin was so white that he got a deep red mark on his cheek where my sister had ‘bit’ him.

My aunt, on seeing that, grabbed my sister by the face and bit her cheek with her teeth — forcefully.

For a couple of days, a dentist could’ve diagnosed all of my aunt’s cavities from my sister’s face.

These weren’t isolated incidents or the only aunt who made them.

When my sister was fifteen, she contracted a weird disease. For weeks, we couldn’t figure out what was happening to her. She couldn’t keep food down, and she was losing weight fast.

Then, she was diagnosed with a viral form of hepatitis.

My family collectively breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t great, but at least we knew what it was and that there was a treatment available. A different aunt than the one who believes she is a wolf, called Barranquilla from the San Francisco Bay Area and told my sister, “I’m glad you are doing better, but I’m not going to lie, I’m bummed I won’t get to use the most gorgeous black dress I found.”

Then she proceeded to laugh uncontrollably for a few minutes, and so did we because we find the same messed-up stuff funny.

That some people find what I joke about weird makes sense.

That my family does makes no sense at all.

I lost my opportunity to have a healthier sense of humor, or no humor at all, the moment I thought at seven years old I was going to be eaten by a mythical creature.