The End of the Internet...

I've only met them a handful of times. In fact, it may even be a stretch to say that much, although I am pretty sure it's about five...

I have four cousins on the Hughes side, and I don't know them at all. I do remember at one family get-together down in Kentucky, when the all us boy cousins went riding on our bikes and discussed the "haunted house" in the field across the street. There was one other time that we--that is myself, my older brother Tom, our cousin Matt, and one of the missing Butterfields, recorded ourselves singing Lee Greenwood's "And I'm Proud to be an American." (Screechy, as you can imagine... We were like eight or nine--what did you want, Charlotte Church?)

Having the entire Internet at my disposal, I have attempted for almost a week now to find out something--anything--about where the Butterfields might be, but all to no avail. It seems even the World Wide Web isn't as universally world-wide as the name implies. I did manage to find their mother's and step-father's address and phone number within five minutes, thanks to Google, but there's history there--not involving me, thank goodness--perhaps I was too young to be involved, and I'm not about to start now!

So I ask: Joshua, Rebecca, June, and Jacob--where the heck are you guys?! It's like you have all fallen off the face of the earth, not leaving so much as a byte behind!

Of course, I can imagine horrible scenarios: Uncle Joe is a child molester, and Aunt Sharon killed them to protect her new husband (well, not so new anymore, I suppose--I only met the guy once, though--easily more than ten years ago, so he's still new to me...) from being arrested in the ensuing investigations. Or, Uncle Tom, their father, didn't want them living with the new Joe, and a violent suicide-murder pact took place to protect them from evil Joe and Sharon... Who the hell knows? Perhaps the four Butterfields simply aren't Net savvy? I would make a bust about growing up in the South, but it would seem very anti-productive at this point...

Perhaps I could get Dateline to start a new series: To Find a Butterfield. Or we could make a horror movie simply named Butterfield, in which a Butter monster takes it's revenge on the I-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-Godzilla Cloverfield monster...

Don't ask me why I suddenly had a desire to find them: I've no clue. Perhaps it's the bitter cold temps that make me cabin-feverish--a reconnect with less-well-known cousins could make the dead of winter seem to go by a bit faster--who's to say? But it does seem odd that not one shred of Butterfieldiness (that I know I'm related to) can be found...

Perhaps I've found the end of the Internet?

Ironic, that--the Internet ends in a Butterfield... Somehow, it lacks the fuzzy-warmness the name implies... There should at least be a pot of gold...

But then again--Cloverfield wasn't exactly about leprechauns and rainbows, was it?