- Pick an alpine sport: ice climbing, fly-fishing, kayaking, mountain climbing, trekking, snowshoeing, skiing, or mountain biking, and excel at it. It doesn’t matter if you live in Florida, you need to train so you can join your in-laws in death-defying “leisure sports” at high altitude (with no bleeping oxygen!).
How to dress: In jeans and a warm jacket, because you’ll be outside shoveling hay.
What not to do: Mention how your gay brother in Boston just got married and a drag queen performed the ceremony.
3. Southwestern In-Laws (New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada)
There are two kinds of ex-hippie in-laws in the Southwest: those with boatloads of money and those with a jar of pennies. Figure out which one your in-law is. The former has a perfect golf swing, and the latter reliably has peyote.
When your Southwest in-laws hug you, they practically blind—the sun glints off their turquoise jewelry and belt buckles, sending signals miles into the sky. (Duh, that’s how the aliens found Roswell.)
Your in-laws are into spirituality with a capital S. Every inch of wall space is covered with pottery depictions of Kokopelli and watercolor drawings of pueblos and adobe homes in rust and muted orange hues. They subsist on roasted green chilies and yerba mate. They also don’t age. Is it the desert? The dry heat? Each time you see them, they’re younger. In fact, they’re twenty-five years old right now. It’s terrifying.
How do you ingratiate yourself with southwestern in-laws?
- Go hot-air ballooning with your in-laws! Everyone in the Southwest does it. How else do you pass the time in l00-degree heat? Remember, hot-air balloons aren’t just for Dorothy & Co. They’re for you, your in-laws, and nineteenth-century explorers.
- Vegas, baby! Anyone? Slot machines? Showgirls? People-watching? Shark tank at Mandalay Bay? (These are rhetorical questions. You don’t have to answer them.) But you may want to propose them to your in-laws when they bust out the tarot cards—again. Hey, why don’t you use those tarot cards to predict some winning hands of blackjack? As they say in the movies, “it’s just crazy enough to work, boss.”
