every family has 'that' cousin, uncle, aunt whatever. you know the really weird one, maybe they smell, or are convinced that the fbi is hovering overhead spying on them. you know who im talking about. being an adptee, have you ever looked at them and thought to yourself 'thank god i dont share a gene pool with them!' ?
i mean no disrespect, but i just got some pics from a family event this summer, and my cousin chris was in one. i love him, but i am so thankful we dont share dna.
2008-01-18T12:39:15Z
to lori a, im proud to be your twinkie. let them run!
2008-01-18T12:43:08Z
phil m-the black sheep has always been my favorite, revel in it
mscrawdad-can i come to the next family dinner? i have never met a real priestess, it would be an honor. LOL! love that!
mscrawdad2008-01-17T10:14:34Z
Favorite Answer
OMG! That is hilarious! Yes, there is one in every family whether adopted or not. And just because they are adopted doesn't mean they get excluded from being "that person"! I'm from the Deep South. I don't know if any of you have ever watched Designing Women on TV, but Julia Sugerbaker was always on a rant about some injustice in the world. One episode was regarding "that person". Her rant about people wanting to hide "that person" from the world by sticking them in a mental institution or whatever was one of the funniest episodes I ever saw.
To paraphrase, she basically said that this is the Deep South, we don't hide our crazy family members in the attic or in a home, we march them right on out into the parlor and let them sit on the front porch. We even allow them to interact with company! We are in fact, PROUD to have that crazy person in our family and would do harm to anyone who ever mistreated them in any way.
I thought about all of the crazies in my family, my oldest sister being the nuttiest of all right now and how true it really is. My Mom was having a huge family dinner and long lost cousins were showing up from all over. We didn't tell my sister because, well because she's mental. Poor thing has had several strokes and it has left her intermittently kookoo, plus she lists to the right when she walks because that is her weak side. So if you lose her you just have to stay in the same spot. She'll eventually make a huge circle and return to you! Hahaha! Anyway, she found out of course. We have a huge family and she lived next door to my Mom. About an hour after everyone arrived here she came. It was too funny not to laugh. My 2 yr old grandson called her Aunt Cockadoodle Doo after a Wiggles song because her hair always looked like a rooster. She comes in with that hair sticking straight up and he runs up to her and starts singing, "Quack Quack Quack, Cockadoodle Doo, etc." and everybody looks up and sees her. Mom nearly fainted. I burst out laughing and she picked up my grandson and said that her hair must not be combed right because he thought she was a rooster. The rest of the family was awed into silence while she made her way to a seat.
You guys, she had on a PJ shirt inside out with no bra (huge kabooms) and a pair of peddle pushers she had had taken in and there was a pair of jean shorts sewn into the seam in the back hanging down that she kept trying swish away with her hand. She had on two different shoes one of which was broken. She did not have her false teeth in and she had lipstick smeared all over her face, red rouge like a clown and a fake eyelash stuck to her cheek.
I sat her down by me and just pretended nothing at all was wrong, but she kept asking me what was so funny because I laughed hysterically through the entire event. Everyone loosened up and got used to her appearance and went on to have a wonderful family dinner. My Mom asked us to put my sister in a nursing home when she died. But I told her that she took all of that way too seriously. Everyone in the world knows the girl has had a dozen strokes and she's lucky she can walk and talk and feed herself. If she acts crazy 3 out of 5 days, so what.
I did get her into an assisted living apartment after my Mom died and she has appointed herself as "The High Priestess of St. Helena". She's in the paper all the time for some thing or another. One Thanksgiving she cooked for all of the residents of the apartment complex. Well, word of it traveled and a reporter came out and asked her why she did it. She said because it was one of her duties to provide for her peasants as The High Priestess of St. Helena. Every time one of my friends calls or sees me they ask how The High Priestess is. My answer is always the same - As crazy as ever.
You already know my answer. IT'S ME!!!! I'm the freak of the family. I've only been married once. I think the government has a hidden agenda. I don't think I'm better than any one else, maybe more fortunate but not "better". I put a child up for adoption. And I don't much give a rats behind what they think. I smelled funny when I was younger (it was pot) and I dressed in anything that would make them embarrassed, talk about me more and stay at an arms length. Now you know why they are so standoffish to you. Their frail little hearts can't go through it again. Ten minutes around you and they want to RUN.
I will admit to this, though I will also say I feel a little guilty about it. I mean, I love them, but some of the things that come out of their mouths just make me wonder. (Seriously, some of the stuff, if I were to repeat it here, would get me reported, and rightly so.)
But I will also say, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that they feel the same way. I am, in some ways, the black sheep, the weird one, in my adoptive family. Of all the family members who aren't in-laws, I have the highest degree, I work in the odd field (higher education), I am probably the odd-man out politically, etc. So I do recognize that it might go both ways.
But I really do know what you mean. Everyone probably thinks things like this about their family, but as an adoptee, I sometimes think I feel more guilty about it. Ah well...
I love this question! When I told my husband I was adopted, he didn't respond right away and I was worried that this might be a problem.. Then he sighed and said "what a relief that is!" He now loves my mother very much but shared later that she was a real concern and my being adopted put him at east that I wouldn't be like her later :)
In my adopted families cancer, heart disease, stroke, Turner's Syndrom, and learning disorders are present on one side or the other. I don't know my medical history but I fugure it couldn't be worse than this.
Yes. But I didn't feel too bad when I found out other relatives in my adoptive family who had married into the family felt the same way about that person. Even people who were blood relations were glad they weren't too closely related in the gene pool.