My family full of YAHOOs (Looooong!)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

July 4th is coming up soon and this year, for me, that means a family reunion. I can’t possibly be the only one here who thinks their family is jacked up.

It is going to be held in Denver, on my uncle’s horse ranch. Plans include:

Day 1 - everyone splits into 3 camps…one group goes fishing, one goes to the Rocky Mountains, another goes to Pikes Peak.
**Day 2 **- Family-wide softball game!
Day 3 - Horseback riding
Day 4 - We’re roasting a pig underground.

Wooowwww, you might say - that sounds fantastic.

No. You are wrong. This is my father’s side of the family and they are a bunch of complete yahoos. Did I mention he has 10 brothers and sisters? Here’s a brief introduction to the family (names have been changed to protect the innocent - HA!) :

Aunt Margaret (Marge) - She’s the oldest. She married a man I called “Pervert Uncle Rog.” He would grab my mother up and say, “How do you feel? You feel pretty good to me!” and he’d sort of rub her against his chest. My mother’s eyes were so big, you couldn’t tell she’s Korean. Once, when I pointed out his rather large gut, he said, “That’s not my gut! That’s my coiled up cock!” Pervert Uncle Rog is also well known in the family for taking pictures of Aunt Joan’s naked butt. (More on her to come.) Aunt Margaret is a nutritionist and won’t let anyone have seconds of anything. I got in trouble once while in high school for saying to her, “Wow, Aunt Marge, that hysterectomy really took the edge off you!”

Uncle Kenny - He’s pure Texan. Won’t take off his cowboy hat or boots or pull the toothpick from between his yellow teeth.

Uncle John - John married Sue. At their wedding, Aunt Joan stuck her bare ass out of the bus that drove the liquored up attendees from ceremony to reception. He has 3 kids - youngest is named Bonnie Sue.

Aunt Terri - Blissfully normal (relative term).

** Aunt Aggie (Agnes)** - Drove a truck, loved to fish, true German thighs. I was convinced she was a lesbian until she married a few years back (that doesn’t mean I don’t still suspect).

** Aunt Joan** - Okay. Aunt Joan married Neil. I think she was 17-18 at the time and pregnant. Neil has a toilet bowl haircut (bald on top) which he let’s grow long. He is always smoking and doesn’t wear shoes that aren’t flip flops. They have three kids - all of their names start with J. Their house is always filthy and Joan is known to simply buy more clothes, rather than wash the dirty clothes. Twin sister to John. Took pictures of Rog’s naked ass.

** Aunt Lucille ** - She’s somewhat cross-eyed, has a really long face and splits her hair down the middle per Jan Brady. She’s a know-it-all who doesn’t know all that much. Married to Uncle Ron - big Italian man who salts and peppers everything before eating it - this includes pickles.

Uncle Mark - Family alcoholic. I’d wince when I saw him and then my mother would say, “He used to change your diapers.” :double wince:

Aunt Marie - Who knows?? She looks a little like Crystal Gayle (sp?) and is also slightly cross-eyed.

Uncle Bernie - Pretty normal - especially if he wasn’t only six years older than me.

Grandpa - My grandfather is…hm…well, he swears by the rhythm method. What does that tell you? I got in trouble for once proclaiming loudly at a different family gathering, **“You can’t be a poster child for the rhythm method! I think you and Grandma were doing the Rhythm and Blues method!” **Also believes that land was never taken from Native Americans because they had never filed a deed - in fact, they never even had a deed! Their land, indeed…

I still called on his birthday to wish him happy birthday. He’s getting older and he hasn’t been a bad grandfather - plus it meant a lot to my dad so I said, “I love you, Grandpa.” He replied, “Grandpa loves you, too.” He can’t say “I love you” so that was pretty close.

Once hit a cow in the middle of the night while my sister and I were in the back seat. Cow shit was all over the windshield. His reaction: "Oopsy cowey."

Grandma Hardly knows who I am, what I do, when I was born - but she makes ONE HELL of a mean cinnamon roll.

The topics of conversation will include: Beer drinking, nudity, who is smarter than the other (sure to be entertaining), who drives the nicest American made car, and fishing.

Hm. It just occurred to me that this sounds like a DopeFest. :smiley:

Tibs.

p.s. So please, tell me you have similar family nutjobs…

2

At my husband’s family’s 4th of July reunion, they have a cake for his grandmother’s birthday, which is on that day. Trouble is, she’s been dead for 4 years. The cake now says happy birthday in heaven. Not that bad I suppose.

3

I’ve been giggling all morning over Oopsy Cowesy!

I’m getting married in November, so while my family is much small I’m sure I’ll have stories to share this fall.

4

Heh. Well, you’ve got me beat!

My wife however has an Uncle that is a little, uh, slow.

Once he was driving (yes, he has/had a licence) through Calgary late at night and he heard on the radio that the city was having power outages. He decided he’d better turn off his headlights. :confused:

He was in a town jail and there was a jailbreak. He escaped. He then went back to jail because he had nowhere to go. (In retrospect, probably a good idea)

Oh yeah, he’s also a great inventor. He refuses to show any of his inventions to anybody though (including his family) as everyone is out to steal his ideas. I think he claimed to have made a perpetual moition machine out of some chain, string and a spring.

I don’t think your family is as abnormal as you may think though. Everyone has some beauties in their family tree.

5

My family doesn’t have that many real characters, as they would be called here, though you would never know it by talking to my mom. Whenever I introduce anyone to the family, she always grins and says “Get ready, because we tease hard around here. We’re crazy.”

All my friends agree my mom is crazy, but they usually say it while snorting and shaking their heads. Not quite the whoohoo-happy-fun way my mom imagines.

My aunt (my mom’s sister) has been edging her way into real characterdom for the past few years. I can only speculate that teaching high school English for close to 30 years has driven her slightly mad. She carries a no-smoking sign in her purse and once tacked it on the wall at an Outback when we were seated close to the smoking section and someone lit up. I tell you, nothing’s more fun than traveling in Europe with a fanatic anti-smoker. 

My other aunt (dad’s sister-in-law) can’t even be called a character-she’s just plain nuts. Hates my mom, hates my brother, used to like me but I haven’t checked on that lately. She excels at what my mom calls lemonades, which are compliments meant to sweet that are really sour.

To me: [Son’s name] is thinking about going to Rice. Why didn’t you get in?
To my mom: Oh, your new haircut makes you look so much better than before.
Christmas celebrations must always be arranged around her schedule, because “they have twins.” Why this is has never been explained to anyone’s satisfaction. No Christmas is complete without an account of the twins’ band or sports exploits, usually with videotape that we’re going to admire whether we like it or not.
The twins themselves usually sit silently through all this.

My cousin (stepson of dad’s brother and child of nutty lemonade aunt) is just plain odd, but not in any interesting, endearing way. Try as I might, I can’t think of a single interesting thing he’s said. Ever. When he was a teenager, he would eat little but pizza, which resulted in my grandmother heating up a pizza for him while the rest of us enjoyed the turkey, ham, stuffing, mashed potatoes, macaroni and corn she had spent all day preparing. Following a wedding where I danced with him for a while, his mom said “Oh, he just thinks Summer hung the moon.” One of the most alarming sentences I’ve ever heard in my life.
6

Who is Summer? :slight_smile:

7

Oh, I could have you all beat had I not divorced my ex.

His grandmother decided that she was sick of living. She wasn’t in particularly bad health or anything like that, but she did manage to be as miserable as she could be. She had a fair amount of money - think her estate was something like $750K when she died. Instead of living close to family or friends, she set herself up on an island a couple north of Hilton Head island where she knew nobody. Nice house, nice furniture, but she was utterly alone. She got depressed, and decided to kill herself. This was common knowledge in the family. Nobody stopped her. In fact, they all seemed to think it was a normal, OK idea for a depressed old lady to decide to commit suicide.

When the time came, my ex-mother in law flew down and helped her mother get her affairs in order. Cleaned the house, organized the files, that sort of thing. Ex-gramma called the various loved ones, including my ex, to say good bye. When it was all finished, ex-gramma took an overdose of sleeping pills and killed herself. Ex-MiL was in the house when this all went down. :eek:

So now ex-gramma’s dead. At this point, my ex’s aunt stepped into the picture, and decided that my ex-MiL was to blame for all this going on. Remember, this was all premeditated - nobody DIDN’T know what was going on, and nobody stopped ex-gramma from killing herself. Despite this, ex-aunt pressed charges on ex-MiL and she had to stand trial for killing her mother. :eek: :eek:

I think the case was ultimately thrown out of criminal court, since it was very apparant it was a suicide. So ex-aunt then took ex-MiL to civil court to sue her for more of the money from the estate. Lucky me, at this point the ex and I broke up. IIRC, at around the same time, ex-MiL moved from one home to another and didn’t call my ex for several months to let him know her new phone number. I never did find out how the civil court case went.

8

Uh…whoa, Athena. Now that’s some jacked up shit.

Tibs.

9

In my family, we’ve got a saying: “If we didn’t tease you, how would you know we love you?”

We’ve got my aunt and uncle. They got me kicked out of high school after my mom died, and as a direct result I never went to college. My uncle also gave me a loan years later so I could keep my car running- at 12.5% interest.

One of my cousins recently had a psychotic break, ostensibly caused by his then-untreated diabetes. He’s now extremely religious, and has taken to trying to get the rest of his family into his pyramid scheme.

Another of my cousins is due out of prison (for murder, during a drug deal) later on this year. I’ve not seen him in years. His brother steadfastly avoids any sort of family reunion- an attitude I can completely understand.

My father, a man whom I’d not seen for years, died penniless and noseless. I actually did see his family a few years ago- and apparently, I’m descended from a long, proud line of white trash. They thought my brand-new Camaro was just the bee’s knees.

For the longest time, one of my aunts wouldn’t speak with her brother. We’re talking years, here- because of something he’d said at a Christmas party once.

That same uncle had a heart attack two years ago at another family Christmas party. He didn’t bother to tell anyone, though- he just had his wife quietly sneak out with him and drive him to the hospital.

10

Well, how did your dad lose his nose?

Incidentally, I just love reading about dysfunctional families. I hope more people write about theirs. Mine is completely nuts, but we all really like it that way. To the outsider it must look stange, but we feel just fine about it!

11

Well, EchoKitty, I aim to please.

Mom’s side of the family is much more tight knit - but much more dramatic, as well. They…hm, how shall I say it…expect more from their kids than my dad’s side does.

Well, my sister and I are the oldest cousins…sister is a doctor, I’m an attorney. So they were really wondering what the next cousin would be. Turns out she dropped out of high school, ran away with her boyfriend and returned pregnant. That’s not the dysfunctional part.

The dysfunctional part was that …well, my mother’s side is Korean. And my cousin (who is completely Korean, unlike me - my father is French-German) got pregnant by a Vietnamese boy. Asian people have some REALLY strong negative stereotypes about other Asian people. So my Grandmother basically swore that she’d never be in another room with a Vietnamese person as long as she lived. My mother was furious and when it wasn’t directed at my cousin, it was directed at me because my response was, “Congrats!! When is the baby due??” I spent so much time working in a pregnancy clinic that this stuff just doesn’t phase me. ANYWAY, so cousin had the baby and all is well but Grandma still hates Vietnamese people.

Tibs.

12

EchoKitty- I have no idea. I’m assuming cancer- he smoked all of his adult life. It was untreated; I saw him about two years before his death, and he just had this self-applied bandage over the hole where his nose would be. Very disturbing.

I understand his death was from that… condition.

13

I’m Summer. The sentence just didn’t look the same with Fionn in place.

14

My family’s not big yahoo contenders, but there are still some gems:

-Until recently, my grandma drank Jack n’ Coke.

-I have an aunt who was a nutritionist, but kept the kids fed on nothing but cottage cheese and celery. It’s a miracle they all turned out pretty normal.

-My aunt has a boyfriend who once ran a hotel that was raided so many times in drug and prostitution stings, the city shut it down.

15

Okay, Fionn gets the “Creepy Cousin has a Crush” award.

Tibs.

16

Tiburon, my mother’s side of the family are all Ozark country people, my father’s siblings don’t speak to each other, and Mrs. Kunilou’s family is Asian-American, so I have an idea of what you’re talking about.

As my sister always says, “better dysfunction than no function at all.”

When Mrs. Kunilou accepted my proposal, I warned her that I was the “normal” one in the family. She had trouble accepting this, becasue she thought (and still thinks) I am whack.

Then she started meeting members of my family. Doesn’t matter which side, I can trace various mental illnesses and anti-social behavior through both my mother and my father’s side. I’m not just talking about cute quirks, either, I’m talking things that we as a society shouldn’t tolerate.

My advice is to sit back and enjoy the show. The dynamics existed a long time before you were born, and there’s not much you can do to change them.

17

Lightnin’, how did your Aunt and Uncle get you kicked out of high school?

18

Kunilou, do you think that the Asian side of your wife’s family is pretty hard on people? My mother’s side is far, far more demanding than my pop’s.

Tibs.

19

I have an Uncle who went to a Catholic seminary, graduated, & decided not to be a priest 1 day later.

We all believe that he did this to get a free college degree. Most of his non-religious courses were in finance & accounting.

My maternal great-grandmother, Granny as we called her, was dearly loved & greatly treasured. And believed that if she talked to the people on TV, they could hear her. But the most wonderful woman who ever lived. I still love her.

20

My uncle once shot a hamster in his bathtub with a BB gun, because his snake was failing to catch the hamster. Other than that, my family’s mostly normal.