Siding with Lucille

Let’s just jump right in: Sylvie’s a nightmare come true. Sure, who doesn’t want an eccentric aunt in their lives to jumble up the boring bag of life once in a while. Sylvie as a guardian? -- hard pass.

Sylvie’s all kinds of weird. From our first encounter, we could tell something was not right. Wearing a green prom dress in the dead of winter to meet your nieces is a giant red flag saying you don’t know a thing about conventional standards (or general health awareness for that matter -- I’d be freezing!). She always tends to run through the motions. One beautiful showcase of this was the next-level parent sick-note on page 77. She knows the jist of a sick note but has no clue how to enact it. If Sylvie had cut that note after the first sentence, it would’ve been fine.

She also has no idea how housekeeping works. For example, only cleaning half the ceiling and stacking cans just because it seems right. Additionally, Sylvie’s frivolous personality blends the line between inside versus outside: She enjoys eating the pitch black dark and never bothers to cook -- I wonder if she even knows how to cook. At one point, Lucille mentions that it’s now “Sylvie’s house” and I agree. I’d scream if I opened the kitchen cabinet and found a squirrel hiding behind the cereal, but Sylvie seemed just fine living in tandem with wild animals. 

Learning from Sylvie about how to live your life normally would be an ultimate disaster unless you actually planned on becoming a transient. You can’t even trust Sylvie to teach you how to live a long life: she wanders around a bridge just because she was curious. So, while I had originally thought Lucille was rude and annoying, she’s the only one with a society-based mentality. Had I been in the same situation as Lucille, I would’ve done everything she did.