A personal payoff from genealogical research!
it appears that in my father’s family, the black sheep is always a female. I’m it in my generation.
It’s not my fault! It’s hereditary!
(How’s that for proof that we older folks can learn from the younger folks. I’ve now shifted blame to my ancestors! I’m a victim of my genes.)
So what particular brand of horse-thievin’ or cattle-rustlin’ are you laying claim to?
In my wife’s family all four of her great-grandfathers took off during the depression and left their wives and young children to get along as best they could. So it looks like I’ve got a license to boogie on out of here anytime I feel like.
Naw. It was a generational anomaly. Husbands and fathers since then have been devoted family men. I’ll have to find a new excuse.
“When you wake up in the morning, Pooh,” said Piglet at last, “what’s the first thing you say to yourself?”
“What’s for breakfast?” said Pooh. “What do you say, Piglet?”
“I say, I wonder what’s going to happen exciting today?” said Piglet.
Pooh nodded thoughtfully.
“It’s the same thing,” he said.
When you come right down to it, in the overall scheme of things, none of us were black sheep, just sort of off-white. We were embarrassments to our families at least once.
When you start doing family tree research, it is common to run into a brick wall from time to time because aunt so-and-so was less than pure, or uncle someone was a drunk or abandoned his family. All this gets put into perspective when you visit the blacksheep society web site and you find that only verified horse thieves, rustlers and murders, etc. qualify you for membership.
I don’t know. Part of my family comes from the deep south, and when they start talking about the black sheep in the family I’m always afraid they mean it literally.
Damn, I read that first line as:
“A personal payoff from gynecological research!”
WHOAH!
I think I need to go to bed.
And all I ever found out was that my Greatgrandmother got pregnant by the master of the house and had to come to America. She was, after all,irrevocably soiled. And
Irishman…you really need some sleep!! Or company…
Always remember that you are unique, just like everybody else.
Heck, I come from a whole fam damily of black sheep. My maternal grandfather was the town drunk. My mom’s mom was pretty decent, but chronically depressed and emotionally manipulative. My father was a deadbeat dad. His mother was one of those mean-spirited hardcore Catholics who gives Catholocism a bad name.
My stepfather’s mother periodically left the family to run off with some guy…
His oldest brother kidnapped and tried to kill his first wife when they were going through the divorce. He may have, uh, facilitated the suicide of a severely depressed friend of his second wife, who was staying with them so she could have an eye kept on her while she was adjusting to her meds. There was a fifty thousand dollar life insurance policy involved, his wife was the beneficiary.
Stepdad’s youngest brother cheated on his first wife with, well, anything in a skirt.
Second oldest boy was a coke addict.
Stepdad, we find out after mom was married to him and endured seventeen years of physical and emotional abuse, is gay. No, they’re not married anymore.
Mom’s into the Eck, whatever that is. It has something to do with Babylonian mysticism, a five hundred-year-old Tibetan dude and a temple on Venus.
Me, I was a stripper for a short while a few years back, I did three weeks on a psychic hotline, then God hit me upside the head with a two-by-four.
I finally ended up a believing Catholic. But I didn’t wind up your garden-variety Latin Rite Catholic. Nooooo. I have to be one of those strange Byzantine Catholics.
Of course, with the background I come from, being any kind of orthodox (small o) Christian makes me a bit strange…
Now in my second month of exile in the 21 pit
Agisofia -
On the other hand, think of the best selling book! People have made lots of money writing about families much more “conventional” than yours!
Seriously, you seem to have managed to keep (or achieve) a healthy perspective in the midst of chaos. Congratulations.
A couple of generations from now, your descendants may find that these folks add a bit of spice to the family history. It’s a lot easier to be cavalier about their escapades when they’ve been dead for a few decades.
Take a look at the blacksheep site: http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~blksheep/
and you may find that yours are no darker than maybe a charcoal gray!