My ex’s wife buried an axe in her boyfriend’s face and tried to inject air into his veins to kill him. Somehow she beat the rap and went on to run over her second husband.
She’s on the wagon now and straightened out her life, had a new baby, and found out she has breast cancer.
My family’s from a small town in Kentucky, where I used to spend a lot of time until it became unsafe. Why is it unsafe? Because my grandmother’s brother, Dan, wants to kill her and anyone having anything to do with her. All because she “ruined” his insurance scam. See, his wife had finally decided to leave his ass after years of mental and physical abuse, and he decided to burn down the house for insurance money. He needed money to pay back his brother, Boosie, $30,000 he borrowed/stole. So he burned down the house (not before removing everything that was his) and got $100,000 out of it, but his wife, Willie May, got half of it. Well, Dan wanted the $30,000 to be paid back out of his Willie May’s half, not his. She obviously did not go for that, and he ended up having to pay. And what did my grandma have to do with any of this? She paid for his wife’s lawyer, which he considered a capital offense. For a short time Boosie also wanted to kill my grandma, but he seems to be over it. Most everyone has forgiven him because the popular opinion is that he was brainwashed by Dan (who has been involved in a few cults over the years).
Recently, he drugged Willie May and remarried her without her knowledge, much to their daughter’s dismay. The daughter has tried to get police involved, but there’s no proof and Willie May won’t press charges. By the way, those are real names, not exaggerations.
That is just the current ongoing drama. In the past 10 years there have been shootouts between in-laws, countless standoffs, two sisters trying to kill eachother with assorted staircases because of a possible inheritance of millions from an elderly woman they looked after, ghost sightings, “visions” that allegedly run in the family, a near feud over some land that a disowned cousin sold to a rival family, a cousin hiding in a field for days after escaping from some sort of mental facility for teens, forged bills of sale, cults, accusations of murder, no less than 4 cars thrown off cliffs for insurance money, and tons of other hillbilly drama I’m forgetting.
In all fairness, most of my family are good–if misguided and nutty-- people and just have moments of the temper that runs in our family. Well, except for Dan, he’s criminally insane but at least he’s semi in hiding now. My theory on why we have so much soap opera drama is that years ago the family used to be fairly well-to-do because they owned lnearly all of the land in town, but a couple generations ago the good hearted patriarch gave nearly all of it away to friends in need. This left the funds dwindling, but my family was still well respected, and that got many of them out of trouble when they were in trouble with the law. I doubt all of this would go on if they actually had to worry about consequences.
When my friends make fun of me for watching soap operas with events they swear could never happen, I just laugh because I know better.
I have ex-relatives that are. My ex-husband was the highest educated person in his family - he graduated sixth grade!! There is no more that I wish to say about the EX branch of the family. Did I mention he was an EX???
Kal - I gotta meet you. I’m just sayin’ - I really really gotta meet you. 
Low self esteem? How about shrewd judge of character? Maybe realistic understanding of personal living skills?
If there are more than two criminal cases pending against your immediate family members, then you don’t come from a troubled background, you’re part of a criminal gang. And a fairly inept one, at that!!
Tris
I’m originally from Arkansas. That should be enough of an answer, but in case it’s not:
[ul]
[li]I have (or had, in some cases) close relatives named Roy Lee, Della Mae, Clydene, Minor (Sr. and Jr.), Darlene, and an uncle by marriage whose name was Lee but was universally known as “Jitter”[/li][li]At least two cousins (one on each side of the family) have done time in the Arkansas state prison system on drug charges[/li][li]One of them, in his early forties like me, has to the best of our knowledge never actually worked in his life, and is constantly begging my aunt for money to buy pot[/li][li]His two siblings aren’t so bad, but their kids made up for it by living made-for-Jerry-Springer lives[/li][li]I have an even dozen first cousins and siblings (i.e., the children of my parents and their siblings); my sister, myself, and one other cousin actually graduated from college (the youngest of the bunch is still in high school, however, so he doesn’t really count).[/li][li]Another aunt and uncle live in an old farmhouse in the country on a piece of land shared by a dozen tractors, three or four combines, sundry plows, cultivators, sprayers, etc., as well as seven or eight dogs, a handful of cats, and a half-dozen chickens, not to mention various non-functional automobiles and several outbuildings crammed with old tools and other crap, all of which would no doubt collapse if anyone had actually attempted to touch them with a paintbrush in the last half century.[/li][li]I actually know what tractors, combines, plows, cultivators, and sprayers look like and are for[/li][li]Moving to Texas to work in construction in the early '70s was actually a step in upward social and economic mobility for two of my dad’s brothers[/li][li]My father was president of his high school’s FFA chapter[/li][li]My grandparents lived for twenty years or so in a shack with an old tourist court cabin on the back of the lot that contained all the crap that was too crappy to keep in the house with the rest of the crap[/li][li]My grandfather drove a 1963 Chevy pickup from right about the time it was new (before I was born at least, in 1964) until his death in the late 1980s.[/li][li]As an adolescent, Christmas presents from my relatives tended to be things like washcloths and soap, socks, etc. – whatever was on sale down at the Dollar General store before it gave up and left town like the rest of the businesses there.[/li][/ul]
Despite all that, my parents are open-minded, tolerant, value education (my dad went to community college at night for years and eventually got a B.S. at 38), etc. By Arkansas standards, they’re pretty darn civilized. They’ve worked all their lives (my dad sometimes working two or three jobs at a time), have never been arrested, never had a drinking problem or done drugs (at least to my knowledge), have no debt other than a mortgage that’ll be paid off in a couple of years, have been more or less happily married for 45 years this fall, etc. They welcomed my wife as the best thing that ever happened to me even though they’re fairly committed Christians, while she’s Jewish. They accepted my conversion to Judaism with equanimity and grace – it has literally never been an issue for them.