What is your family lore. You know, the thing you thought was unique about your family, and then found out everyone does it?
Something like, oh I dont know…
Pull My Finger
My father was a talented and amazing mage. He could do magic, and it was real!
He used to pull quarters out from my ears.
There’s another one I remember. This one’s a little weird.
We had a little jewelry box with a severed finger in it.
My family once owned 10 acres of land in Barstow, CA. (halfway between Los Angeles & Las Vegas, basically in the desert.) Rumor has it was won in a poker game many generations ago.
Not unique by any means, just noteworthy: my father and his three brothers all went ino the service for WWII, each in a different branch. No navy, but the other branches. They all returned safely.
Weird, we had one of these too. Ours had a lot of blood on it though. Never did learn where mom got it from.
Ours didn’t have blood. But many is the time that I thought of putting ketchup on it.
That our family was the only one with a disabled member. (and that that member was adopted) MANY HS friends have disabled relatives.
My family had photo albums that had pictures of a baby smashing a birthday cake. There were pictures from long before that of people who seemed to be on a picnic except the men were dressed in suits and a boating hat and the women were wearing a lot of clothes for a warm day.
Later found out everybody has these pictures in their album.
We used to have a cat that was sent to live on my aunt’s farm.
Both of my parents used to walk ten miles to school, through 6ft snow drifts, with no shoes.
Mine too. But not uphill both ways.
They grew up in Kansas.
Both my parents were perfect. Never did anything wrong, never got less than A in any class in school. That couldn’t be made up because they never lied either.
Yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the shooting of George Wallace, which made me remember this one:
When I was a kid I used to think that my parents must be super important because whenever we ran into George Wallace, who is increasingly forgotten now as each new generation comes of age but at that time was world famous, my father called them by name and shook their hands. I knew that my father had taught Wallace’s older children and had also once done some kind of consulting work on state history for him, and that my mother was a favorite teacher of Wallace’s youngest daughter and stepsons, but that had been years before. I thought even so they must be very important to make such an impact on somebody who sees 5 million people a week.
What I didn’t know at the time was just an unusual and much attested to talent of Wallace: even in his last decades when pain and painkillers had dulled his senses, George Wallace had an almost superhuman memory for faces and names. It’s very much addressed in books and bios about him, even those by people who hated him; he could meet somebody, neither see them nor have any apparent reason to think about them for the next 15 years, and recall their name instantly when he saw them again. It’s up there with “poured ketchup on everything [including bread and vegetables]” and “deaf as a post in one ear and can’t hear much out of the other” [WW2 damage to his eardrums] in things everybody who knew him recalls, and you can imagine what an asset it was for a demagogue like Wallace.
Haha! One of mine grew up in a coastal area which has had a total of 6ft of snow over the last 100 years or so…
Oh so were mine!! And they never smoked, swore, or had sex.
Ever.
My grandmother wore bluejeans in the 30s. Bold statement back then.
We must be related somehow 
According to my mother’s family, one of my great-grandfathers (my maternal grandmother’s father) knew a man who went on the Titanic. My grandma’s family lived in a village called Tebnine, where about 6 Titanic passengers were from. The guy they knew who went on the ship died in the sinking, though.
According to the Titanic passenger lists that I’ve found, only two victims fit the description, though I don’t remember which one was him.
Oh, did you mean Lore lore (as in how far we can trace our ancestors)? Or Folklore (as in tales of yore from your family)? Because I’ve got both.
Or did you mean Data’s daughter? ‘cuz I got nothin’ in that case.
Lore was his brother, Lol was the daughter.
Here is something that is unique to my family, but an amusing tale nonetheless.
When someone farted and nobody would confess, someone in my family would say “The Phantom did it”. I was the youngest in my family and I just grew up with this. We still say it today. It wasn’t until I was in my forties that I found out the origin of this story. Apparently once there was a bad smell of that variety and I was asked several times if I had crapped my pants and I guess I replied with the negative and only after sometime did I confess. I was THREE! THREE YEARS OLD and every time all the members of my family were making fun of ME when they said that. They would say “Must have been the phantom” and everyone would laugh and I never knew they were laughing at ME!
WHO HOLDS SOMETHING A THREE YEAR OLD DID AGAINST THEM FOR FORTY YEARS?!?! MY FAMILY THAT’S WHO!
Do you have an Irish grandmother?
Because I do, so you never know!