Wonder why I'm nut's?

In which Pooh discovers what Alex Haley already knows. There is just no explaining some elements of your family tree.

Mopsa, blogged a story called "The Invalid" about a family Easter dinner on 4/25/03. I loved this post. I was still chuckling when I thought about it this weekend.

We ALL have them...family skeletons, I mean.

I am talking about those unbelievably boorish, demented, clueless, knuckle dragging ding-dongs that somehow jacked into your family genetic code when you weren't looking.

Now if the connection is a close one, genetically speaking, (say a sister or parent), we can claim that Darwin forgot to mention that SOMETIMES, trailer trash or a chunk of Twinkie can get into the DNA when it is cooking and can cause negative aberrations in the outcome.

If the connection is many genetic permutations away from you, it is ok to claim that some super bad DNA was inadvertently allowed into the family primordial stew by accidental overexposure to alcohol.

Yes indeedy, no matter how you cut it, we all have stories we can tell on our families and ourselves.

This story involves a Thanksgiving party that my mother threw a couple years ago.

By way of full disclosure, it is imperative for me to say this right up front.....................My immediate family is completely insane!

Always has been. Happily so, I might add. Growing up at my house was like "Our Gang" meets the "Marx Bothers". Add "The Addams Family" minus the ghoulish stuff and then send everybody to the "Fame" school. That will get you a fair description of life at our house growing up.

My Mom was/is the ringleader.
A few years ago, she thought it would be fun to do a little genealogy research on our family. She found she was not only enjoying the research but she turned up a ton of stuff we never knew and it was a fascinating experience. In the course of this search, my mom discovered that we had family cousins we didn't know we had. It turns out that they lived in of all places, Duluth Minnesota. (For those of you reading this from say- Glascow, this is a port city north of Minneapolis about 150 miles.) But I digress, mom dropped her cousin a letter of intro and just to say hi and to ask a couple of questions about our shared genealogy. She got a nice response and in time they were e-mailing back and forth every few weeks or so for about 6 months. My mom, (Faye) thought it would be fun to invite her newfound cousin (Betty) and her family down for Thanksgiving dinner.

A word about holiday dinners at my house growing up.

My mom ALWAYS cooked...She ALWAYS has 4 times more food than needed. She is a great cook.... Between my brothers and sisters and all their kids and everyone else, the number of immediate family at these events is 23 if all show. I cannot remember a Holiday meal with less than 35 people in my life, and many times we had over 50......For every major holiday since I can remember.

My mom always encouraged us to invite anyone that, as she put it, "needs a family at the holidays".
(I am biased I know, but I think my mom rocks.)
You need this background for the story.

My mom invited Betty and her husband Bob, 2 of their grown kids, Lisa and John (early 30's), and their spouses and 5 kids..... 11 total. Their kids ranged in age from 3 to 8. We have 12 kids in our clan, ages 1 to 9.

Mom thought that with all the kids it would be fun to do a costumed Thanksgiving. So she called Betty and asked her if that would be ok, or would they rather just come without the costumes. Betty said "Sounds like a wonderful idea lets all do it in full costume". Mom says great, and then purposely said, we have a rather odd family when it comes to stuff like this so be prepared for costumes that are a bit out there..... they will not be typical...is that ok with you?
"Not typical?? Ooooh that sounds very arty, we can hardly wait." says Betty...

We start to plan and soon the day arrived.

Now if you are squeamish you should turn away now, as from here on it gets just plain family ugly.

The doorbell rings and I open the door to greet them. Here they are all prim and proper wearing nothing that looks like Pilgrim clothes save one cross tie and a shawl. Well...ok so they didn't want to come dressed up. That's ok.... "Come on in and welcome to the Family Thanksgiving feast" I say.

Remember my description of my family? ...This is not a store bought costume kind of family. We tend to be ....ahem...a wee-bit creative when it comes to this stuff. I had a sense when I opened the door and saw their reaction to my costume that we may be in for a long day.
My Costume:
I had paper mache'd a huge craggy mass around my body and head. I then painted it gray and hot glued moss and other stuff to the outside. I then imprinted the legend "1492" on my side...
They stood in the door staring... not moving at all..I pointed to the number on my side and said, "See look 1492, I'm Plymouth Rock!"

I think the look in their eyes could best be described as fear....

It was mostly like a Rod Serling episode of Twilight Zone after that.

We always encourage our "kids" to stretch their imaginations when doing anything creative and that almost nothing is off limits.
This is the way we grew up, submerged in the most wonderful stimulating environment and we believe in spurring the little ones to explore all ideas.

Now if mom is the ringleader, I am clearly the "out of the box guy". I have a bit of a reputation ...ahem....amongst my nieces and nephews as being the go-to- guy when it comes to lending help in putting stuff like this together.

(It seems there are ridiculous rumours floating amongst my nieces and nephews about me doing completely insane things to get laughs on stage. Somehow, they seem to have the crazy notion I may have some "boundry issues" when it comes to not knowing when to say when for a joke. They feel they can use for their own purpose. )
Anyway, there were lots of calls and meetings to cement down their thoughts, and they came up with some terrific costumes. Some of the highlights.....

2 of my sister Jill's boys came as maize (Jill’s a vegetarian, and the 2 boys thought it would be good to promote a veggie Thanksgiving) They glued about 5000 popcorn kernels to their upper bodies and then they glued down enough corn husks to cover their pants. The other boy of Jill's, Nick, wanted to show how cruel it was to the deer and turkey so, with a little of my help, he came as a head shot deer...(It looked so gruesome that he resurrected it for Halloween the next year). Jill came as a Salem Witch. My favorite niece Sabrina, 9, went whole hog. She spent 2 months working on her Pocahontas costume. It was all leather and beading that she did mostly herself and it was beautiful and she wrote and recited a wonderful little (historically accurate) story. My sister Carrie came dressed as a rifle, My dad, in full headdress was Indian Chief in charge of all firewater. My mom came as the great, great, great, something granddaughter of Captain John Smith, leader of Jamestown Colony. (Which in fact she is).

3 of my brother Rick’s boys wanted to be Indians. Not the lame-o F-troop kind either. So they ended up with a burlap front flap tied at the waist...that's right front flap. They went with the thong between the cheeks leaving the backside exposed. I bought like 60 bucks worth of dark cover makeup and applied it all over their bodies to give them that skin burnished look...add some war paint and feathers and I mean to tell you, they looked great!
Now everybody in MY family thought the bare assed thing was a scream and funny, but the response from out guests was, well, less than ideal.

One of the mom's (Lisa, Betty's daughter) actually started crying. "Oh!Oh! how could you... how could you. That’s obscene."
I said, "Hey the boys are 2, 6 and 6 and I tied the flap down so it wouldn't go anywhere, but if it upsets you, I'm sorry we can put some pants on them don't worry"

Lisa wouldn't shut up about how strange and weird we all were. For the next half-hour until we ate, their entire family sat in the living room looking like our germs were crawling up their legs. I sat and tried to make conversation but nobody spoke more that a yes or no.

All our kids kept inviting all their kids to the basement to play video games and watch Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.... nobody moved.....FINALLY the dinner bell rang and we started eating. We hadn't even started serving when the problem mom, Lisa started whispering loudly to Betty(her mom) "what a terrible thing to do to those little boys"...

That was when my mom got a little steamed...She said something like "First of all, nobody DID it to them. They thought up those costumes, by themselves, by themselves. They asked me if they were ok and I said I thought they were wonderful and clever as well. So, blame me if you think someone needs blaming. Second, nobody else seemed to have a problem with it, but you were uncomfortable so we had them put on some pants .......How about we call it over and done with and lets finish dinner............

then.......BOOM!!!!!!!!

Betty stood up and said.. "WELL I NEVER IN MY LIFE, BLAH, INSULT MY DAUGHTER, BLAH, ETC".... then Lisa's husband stood up and said he was repulsed at the thought of it all and couldn't eat....Lisa stood up and and started crying again....BEDLAM!!!! Then without saying 10 more words, the whole family just got up and left the house and drove off....

We sat there, at the 4 dinner tables for like 60 seconds in dead silence trying to figure out what had just happened. Then, as if cued, Dusty 5 says real loud......

I guess we scared them off, huh Grandma?...

We laughed until our sides hurt about it...

The sad thing is that my mom sent a couple of e-mails to try to smooth things over, but we never ever heard from them again...oh well

Like I said, every family has one..

I know there are those out there that would say that WE are the whack-jobs that everyone thinks has screws loose...It's ok though, I prefer it to being screwed down so tight you can't live.

Posted by Jack at May 05, 2003 08:27 AM