miniature family anecdotes

My brother saying "I am the Macho Man" as a prelude to breaking his arm by jumping over a (very short) retaining wall (while wearing a Farrah Fawcett shirt).

My mom telling an infant me that some chicken livers were actually chocolate cake -- which I believed, eating all of them.

A slice of balogna found on the (woodgrain) wall. Many accusations. An enduring family mystery.

"Twisted Sister" carved in the butter (by Drew) when Faith came for fancy dinner.

Heather and Drew making "brew" which ate through Heather's velour shirt and other things.

Drew and Kelly filling water balloons with stuff (soy sauce and mustard) and tossing them out of the attic window on Redbud Drive.

"Let's do that again!" - Drew after Mom flipped her Volkswagen bug.

Me proclaiming that I needed a Ralph Waldo Emerson costume by tomorrow before going to bed.

Drew answering the door to a man with a giant afro and yelling "It's a guy with circle hair."

My brother, as a child, staring at his Olan Mills photo all day in silence and then saying "how pretty of me."

Mom says to Drew "Who do you think you are, King Shit?" Drew retreats to his room and emerges in a shirt emblazoned with the words "King Shit."

An infant me stabbing myself in the roof of the mouth with scissors. Kelly found a bloody 'Nilla wafer on her bed as a clue. Mom says: "If your dad hadn't have been there you would have died because I had to go outside."

Can anyone post?

My father told me that gooseberries were sheep's eyeballs. I believed him.

BTW never GIS "king shit"...

My dad telling my brother and me to take a huge sniff of this big bowl of chopped horseradish. Oh the deep intense sharp prolonged nasal pain.

Coming home to find my parents down the end of the garden talking to two strangers. Me getting all nervous and shy before discovering they were shop window dummies my parents had found on the wasteground/football pitch behind our house, dressed up in spare clothes and sat down in garden chairs.

Granddad getting drunk on falling on the Christmas tree.

let me try to make that sentence:

Granddad gets drunk, falls on the Christmas tree, toppling it.

My mother, in the hospital after her mastectomy, tries to reassure us while the nurse empties her drains: "Don't worry, that's not blood; it's just bloody fluid!"

Roxy, how old was your brother in the first anecdote?

Shocked that "I am the Macho Man" hasn't become the new "I am the small cat."

At a trailhead on the Blue Ridge Parkway, dad takes out map to give confused stranger directions to botanical gardens, inexplicably pronounces "botanical" as "botonical". Me to sister: "Don't forget to make fun of him for that as soon as we get back in the car."

My dad was videotaping my younger brother on his second birthday. My brother was standing in his crib.

Brother (pointing to stuffed animals): "A lion. A lion. A monkey. A monkey. A labbit. A labbit."
Dad: "What's a labbit?"
Brother: "A rabbit."

Grandpa: "This curve coming up always takes me by surprise."
Me: "See those signs grandpa? Those are clues."

(I was an asshole!)

Uncle lets me read is self published book of poetry. Me: "It's all jibberish!"

this thread has taken a turn for "Kids Say The Prickiest Things"

Great uncle gets in bar fight as a result of dancing with another man's wife / gf. Man is hospitalized and great uncle loses a shoe in struggle with bouncers. Torn shoe remains nailed to bar wall for two or three decades as reminder to anyone who comes to make trouble.

Oh, that's so cute!

Me, age 4: "Aunt M----, is John Glenn running for president or astronaut?"

Roxy, how old was your brother in the first anecdote?

― If Timi Yuro would be still alive, most other singers could shut up, Friday, December 12, 2008 9:00 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

Pobably 10 or 11.

sister amazed by older kids holding spoon over candle then rubbing off the black. tries it out with mom's good silver. can't rub off. throws silver away. mom freaking out about what could have possibly happened to that missing spoon for 10 years.

I do not have a miniature family

frankly i don't believe you, gabbneb

My uncle, as a very young child, was taken to a restaurant, which was a very unfamiliar setting to him (for it was the Great Depression), where he proceeded to yell loudly at the waitress, "Man the wifeboats!"

For some reason this anecdote has been told and retold for more than seven decades now. It is a family heirloom, although it is hard to klnow why.

Fun fact: back in the 30s, "wifeboats" was the most commonly used term for vulva

Drew & Heather would often walk to a small pond by Redbud. Once on this journey they came across a 3 foot square piece of styrofoam. Drew said it could potentially make a great boat, but that Heather should try it out for herself. Heather floated out, the thing turned over, and she went into the nasty murky green swamp (of course). When mom returned from the store they had to explain why Heather was in the shower with slimey green shit in her hair.

I put my feet up on the sides of the escalator at the Trump Tower during the time that Michael Jackson lived in the penthouse (Mom thinks this is an important detail).

"Make that four hoods. I'm a hood, too." - said to Drew & Kelly after they commented that three hoods were approaching the bus stop.

Heather and Emily found a garbage bag full of stripper outfits and weird novelty lingerie in the hall closet on Belleville. Example items: An crotchless/nippleless orange bikini with white piping and a bra and panties set that appeared to be made of dollar bills and green lace.

^One item from this was later used as a prop by Kelly and her friend Jeff in a cabaret act.

uncle really happy he got a book published and openes it for all the family who was gathered round, its some book for coroners w/ a bunch of people dead in different and colorful ways

Drew taking off Tammy's braces with pliers.

Drew - brother
Heather, Kelly - sisters
Tammy - cousin

sorry

Scott (cousin) and Kelly hitting baby Drew over the head with a hard, wooden dog.

"Eat my ham": At the zoo, two small kids were repetitively chanting this in front of the monkey cage. Then they stopped, whereupon their Dad nudged them and said, "Say 'Eat my ham!'" They began again.

My brother, as a child, staring at his Olan Mills photo all day in silence and then saying "how pretty of me."

― rox qua rox (roxymuzak), Friday, December 12, 2008 6:55 AM (10 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

amazing!

Drew (a known fan of cut-off, khaki shorts) walked across Maryville in said shorts during the blizzard of '93.

(Drew amended this story to me at Thanksgiving this year: aparently when he got where he was going, some guy came out of the house with no shirt on, also in shorts, and began washing his Harley. Trumped.)

Drew punched a hole through the wall (?) between his room and Heather and Kelly's room. It stayed unrepaired for ages and was covered up with a Jon Bon Jovi poster on Heather's side. It was soon discovered that the hole was at the level of Bon Jovi's swimsuit region and Drew would poke his finger through there to be hilarious.

Diane asked Bob to pass the relish plate, Bob passed it to her but took the last pickle. Diane asked for the relish plate because she wanted this pickle, so she accepts the plate silently w/o taking anything.

this becomes an enduring family story even tho nobody thinks it's very funny. this, in itelf, becomes hilarious.

to some.

"Emily's E.T. Tata": An ordinary potato allegedly bearing a passing resemblance to Hollywood's E.T., it mouldered, sprouted and became disgusting while I resolutely clung to it. After Mom bought me a stuffed E.T. to replace the moldy "tata", I was thrilled to have "a Mommy ET and a baby ET."

"Sugar and Lard, and I like it!" - Madeline, age 4 or so. This was said into a mic at Meg and Josh's wedding after Madeline was told by her mother (Kelly) that Oreos were nothing but sugar and lard.

Chase, sone of Drew, was given the assignment at school to draw a picture of George Washington. He drew a beautiful portrait of Washington crossing the Delaware, hand over heart, with a speech bubble emanating from his mouth reading "I like to fart and I am crazy."

Dad and his friends used to go hang out at a mysterious place called simply "The Wall." Mom believed it to be a bar for a while, but later accidentally discovered the four or five of them drinking a 12-pack of beer while sitting on a very, very short (< a foot high) wall.

Mom threw Dad's Sons of the Pioneers records down the cliff to get back at him for something. I guess she changed her mind, because she made Kelly and Drew climb down and retrieve them.

last two are str8 amazing

xp

last 3!!

Mom put a label on the peanut butter reading "Heather's. I eat out of this with a fork because I am gross and nasty."

these are gold

Mom was nicknamed "Big 'uns" in high school, while Nancy (her sister, my aunt) was stuck with the confusing nickname "Little Big 'uns" (and later "Ditto").

Mom had a spring from a cuckoo clock (which was being worked on by dad, with a few other people clustered right around it) go through her left eye while in the other room on the phone, right after saying "Hello." She says the most common question she gets about this is "Who was on the other line?" She doesn't remember, and maybe never knew.

Mom used to cook at Dismas House in Maryville, and she once made "cat-head biscuits," resulting in shock from an ESL Vietnamese tenant. "Cat....head?"

i am going to say "how pretty of me" all the time.

Dad built a suit out of aluminum when he worked in the siding business. With a hat.

Dad nailed boots to the porch. This enabled him to lean very far from side to side while playing guitar for passing neighbors, strangers, etc.

Dad, while painting our bedroom yellow on Stonewall, painted giant stick figures and such all over the wall first.

Once Dad and Granddaddy were driving in a van painted with vegetables and sunflowers on their way to Connecticut to visit and a cop attempted to bust them for weed (they had none).

That van had a living room chair as a passengers seat, and a bench in it from the original Alice's Restaurant. And it was originally a Kern's Bread truck.

Nanaw (my grandmother) wore red shorts when everyone else wore blue (which they were instructed to wear) in a huge, city-wide school presentation at Bill Myers stadium while she was a student at Park Jr. High. No one knows if she did this purposefully or not.

Nanaw informed Mamaw (lol @ the south) that she needed a rose costume for a school play the next day before going to bed.

After going to a male strip club: "It is completely true what they say about black men." Kelly probably was not supposed to have overheard that.

(^that one was Nanaw too, sorry)

jesus christ this is the best thread ever ever ever.

When Nanaw was young, she dramatically yanked the phone out of the wall so many times that the phone company wouldn't come any more.

She also wore the same outfit for a year, which consisted of green "Beatle jeans" and a man's shirt. She "had the body of George Harrison" during this time, according to Mom.

Nanaw kept a cassette player and tape of oceanic sounds in the bathroom and would sit in there for hours, presumably meditating.

Granddaddy wandered away from home (way out in the country) to somewhere near downtown when he was very young. When asked where he lived, he replied "Vine Teet" (meaning Vine St., which was not even where he lived anymore). They finally figured out where he belonged thanks to a rent receipt he had been playing with (lol @ the great depression) and placed in his pocket.

On Christmas Eve sometime in the 1950s, Mom proclaimed that everyone was going to be SO surprised at what Santa brought her, because she hadn't told anyone. Nanaw finally persuaded her to tell just her, and a last-minute shopping mania ensued. Granddaddy amazingly managed to find a toy stove at a drugstore that was open late.

Granddaddy worked for ET&WNC and always said it stood for "Eat taters and wear no clothes."

A guy named Matt Corn gave Mom a giant thing of 11 Herbs-n-Spices when he worked at KFC, which she had forever. He gave Drew a second container of it and instructed him to sneakily and slowly refill it in order to drive Mom crazy.

Mamaw Joe having to bury sweet potatoes in the yard so that (crazy uncle) Arnold would eat them.

Smarty Marty time-stepping while reciting the prologue to Marlowe's Faust on the front porch at Belleville. He was also twirling a baton.

Nanaw had this weird friend named Sal who dressed like he lived in about 30 AD. He believed (and Nanaw did, too) that he had a knack for healing people with a combination of intense concentration and, at times, some laying on of hands. He also attempted to heal a broken carousel (and later, a photograph of Heather).

Drew once saw Sal (who was quite thin) hoist a giant rock that a group of large, capable men had just been unable to budge.

Nancy's wedding: The bride wore a pink, sheer nightgown with leopard print panties clearly visible beneath. The groom was red-eyed and probably suffering a Vietnam flashback during the ceremony. The preacher, wearing a powder blue suit with an orange and red plaid flannel underneath, vehemently maintained that "God tuck a man and putt him in the garden." As the couple rode away from the church, Anthony (Nancy's son, my cousin, then about age 7) sat in the bed of their truck holding a sign reading "No Credit."

Aunt Mamie spray-painted a Thanksgiving turkey carcass gold and called it a sleigh, incorporating it into her Xmas decorations.

Drew's annually declining drink inventions. Examples: Triple Sec With An Orange and The Red Beam (Jim Beam in a red glass).

Sloan coming over drunk and attempting to hug the Christmas tree while Steve Lugens (sp?) pretended to be drunk.

Circa 1988, Jeff (from the cabaret act mentioned above) sitting outside on the porch getting covered in snow during Christmas because he didn't want to intrude. He had been invited to stay. Mom just happened to look out the window and discover him sitting there.

Nancy's god-awful Xmas presents to us.

Drew: a shot glass with a tail, and a turquoise half shirt with 3/4 sleeves that was obviously the other half of the outfit completed by Heather's gift (a turquoise skirt).
Kelly: A shirt painted with the legend "Lookin' For A Prince" and a mirror emblazoned with glitter puff paint reading "I'm having a Lizzie Borden day." The latter even had a little bloody axe on it (with the blade done in glitter nail polish)
Emily: An orange half shirt with lace-up sleeves saying "Just Wanna Be Your Teddy Bear" in paint, of course.
Heather: a scarf with puff paint peace signs that were drawn incorrectly and looked more like VW signs.

These were given to us when we were all either teenagers or in our 20s.

Drew won a costume contest dressed as a girl. At first he had no votes, because everyone thought it was a girl. This took place at Moreland Heights Church.

how pretty of him! (sorry)

Drew, Kelly and Heather elaborately convinced me over a period of a few weeks that "pankle" was the ultimate swear word, then suddenly at dinner one night started peppering their conversation with it, to my (apparently hilarious) shock.

(lol horseshoe)

As a child of about four, I embarrassingly pronounced "cheerleader" as "shit-aler" and would proclaim loudly while attending Drew's football games that I wanted to "sit by the shit-alers."

Heather ran away with a suitcase of oranges and Codger, her monkey from the green stamp store. I ran away with a thing of peanut butter wrapped in a tutu. Drew, clearly the most hood of all of us, ran away and slept in some kind of football announcers' booth at school.

Mom caught Heather essentially trying to murder me when I was very young, and Heather used the now famous excuse "my knee went down."

Heather lacked the ability to jump until she was about 8.

Sometime in the 90s, Drew and I got in trouble for writhing around on the floor and laughing/screaming obnoxiously loud. This was a result of a challenge where we had to listen to a whole Biz Markie album from beginning to end.

Drew had an Iron Maiden poster on his wall with an actual spear (or something?) stuck through the dot in the 'i' and red paint dripping down the poster and on to the rest of the wall. Mom was not a fan.

When does the book come out, rox?

I had a small, stuffed Cookie Monster doll when we lived on Belleville. I was about 6 years old, which would make Drew about 16 when I approached him and attempted to engage him in conversation with it. "You're a fruit," Drew said to Cookie. "Cookie not a fruit," Cookie replied.

xpost im keeping a google doc of these things in case lol

I just realized that

My brother saying "I am the Macho Man" as a prelude to breaking his arm by jumping over a (very short) retaining wall (while wearing a Farrah Fawcett shirt).

― rox qua rox (roxymuzak), Friday, December 12, 2008 7:51 AM (11 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

is possibly the same wall as

Dad and his friends used to go hang out at a mysterious place called simply "The Wall." Mom believed it to be a bar for a while, but later accidentally discovered the four or five of them drinking a 12-pack of beer while sitting on a very, very short (< a foot high) wall.

― rox qua rox (roxymuzak), Friday, December 12, 2008 6:13 PM (40 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

it has taken this thread for me to realize that drew is my hero now and probably has been my entire life

i was about to say; your brother is a+++

I was thinking about posting here, but I got nothing. Keep 'em comin'.

On, I think, Stonewall Drive, there was a place in the kitchen where everybody would toss their bookbags and backpacks and crap. This niche was underneath a cabinet attached to the wall at a height of probably 4 feet. Heather, and this is no exaggeration, hit her head on it every single day that that house was occupied by my family.

Nanaw inherited two completely useless things from (the very rich) Marguerite: A Yorkshire Terrier named Peppi and a closetful of furs. Peppi came with a canopy bed and several outfits including traditional Scotsman's gear (completely with sporran) and a raincoat/red rubber boots ensemble.

Soon after Peppi died, Heather and I were sitting across the kitchen table from each other having breakfast. Mom, wanting to let Heather know but not me (I was about 8 and she thought I would be upset; Heather was 16 and could handle it), passed Heather a Post-It note reading "Peppi's dead." Heather burst into loud, uncontrollable laughter.

Dad, a chess badass, played (crazy uncle) Arnold in a chess game in order to win a Bob Welch record for Kelly. He won as expected, but Arnold wouldn't give up the record. Dad broke a cheap acoustic guitar over his head so that he was wearing it "like a necklace."

Drew recently went to visit Mamaw Joe and asked where Arnold was. "He's in his room cutting a rug." He took a peek and yeah, Arnold (who looks and styles himself exactly like Crispin Glover's character in Rubin and Ed) was dancing enthusiastically in silence.

you had me right up until "like a necklace."

i included that because that's how everyone tells it

www.iusedtobelieve.com/

My great great (great?) grandfather, who came across from Germany, was a saucepan salesman. One night, at a great age, he and the family were sitting round the fire as he adjudged his stock. The saucepan he held had a broken handle. He stood up, threw the saucepan into the fire, announced to the entire room "It's buggered, like me", fell back into his chair and promptly expired.

do yall get quotes, or

anyway

I was about 5 and was screaming for my "Boe-Tayven." No one knew what this was and I was driving the entire household insane with my wails and my insistance that they knew what BoeTayven was. When the thing was fnially produced it was a hand puppet of a Muppet character (I think?) with a tag reading "Beethoven."

When my dad first visited my mum's house, he brought her plastic flowers by mistake.

He didn't realize they were plastic, or didn't realize that's not what's done?! Lol

I think he didn't realise they were plastic. Also, during a holiday abroad with some friends early on in their marriage my parents went to a place called "Banana Beach". Naturally, he was the only one of the four to interpret the name literally, take all his kit off and wander about without a care in the world.

I guess he was the only one to interpret it figuratively, then.

:-/

My grandfather's *first* proposal to my grandmother was sloshed drunk at a Jewish Social Services dance. He sobered up, went off to meet his date afterward, and had no memory of it the next day.

my dad had a paranormal experience which involved his apparent bilocation

That sounds interesting. What exactly happened to him?

it supposedly happened to my dad when he was a young man in the army. he was asleep in the barracks and dreamed that he visited a building at another part of the base and talked to some people he knew there. his sleep was suddenly interrupted with an urgent call from the same people at the same building, sounding confused, asking if he had just been there. apparently they swore up and down he had just visited them, and vanished.

but my dad hadn't left his bed at the barracks, and was in the presence of others who were in the room while he was asleep the whole time.

my dad has had a few other weird-ass things like that happen to him, allegedly. i don't really know what to make of it.

I love that kind of stuff!

When my dad was a kid, his crazy relatives were all having a big drunken party and his four year old second cousin fell off a dock and would have drowned unless he saved her. That second cousin was Aileen Wournos, future serial killer.

:O posts

My grandmother once had a job at her local draft board. As I understand it, there were some asshole armed forces guys who were working there to get out of combat, and they were always spouting of racist nonsense, so my grandmother went to her supervisor and made up some kind of story about how the guys were really disappointed that they weren't serving overseas. It worked.

Great-grandfather announced inside his local bar that he was going to shoot Lyndon Johnson when the president next visited Memphis. Three days before LBJ's arrival, secret service picks up granddad and keeps him until three days after.

Granddad looked at Grandma as he was being carried away and famously waved to her and said "Bye bye blackbird."

Now THESE are some grandiose family anecdotes.

at one point, maybe when i was five, both of my parents were on crutches at the same time for reasons i can't entirely remember (think my mom tripped and fell walking downstairs)

Mom slips on a fruit cocktail dropped by infant Kelly and, trying to catch herself, smashes her wrist through the china cabinet. She runs through the house in a panic, squirting blood onto the floor in several rooms. An ambulance takes her and baby Kelly to the E.R. Then my Dad comes home, wife and baby gone, and blood all over the floor.

My dad looks and acts like a redneck Chevy Chase, if this helps you imagine any of his scenarios.

We are driving somewhere in Delaware to catch a ferry, at night. Dad is driving and singing the theme song from Bonanza at the top of his lungs. He gets so into the song that he misses the exit for the ferry, and there is no way to turn around (legally) for fifteen miles, and as a result we miss the ferry. It was a good performance though.

Now THESE are some grandiose family anecdotes.

Honestly, my dad telling the family about saving his future serial killer second cousin was pretty miniature - we were all hanging out once, around when the movie Monster came out and my mom said "Dave, tell everyone about your second cousin" and my Dad laid it out like it was no big deal. Lots of horrible things about my dad's fucked up family come out that way, very casually.

In more miniature fashion:

After my aunt came home from the hospital as a baby, my mom who was like four years old found the dried-up umbilical cord chunk that fell out of her little sister's belly button on the floor. It was black and shriveled and and she put it into a bowl of olives where it was almost eaten by guests that my grandparents had over for dinner.

When I was 12 we were rushing to get to church to pose for the family picture that would come out in the annual directory. My mom sprayed a can of Dow Scrubbing Bubbles foam cleanser on her head instead of hair spray and my dad had to keep telling her she wasn't going to die while scraping a layer of white foam off of her entire head.

Nanaw and her boyfriend Fred were staying at the Hyatt Regency on New Year's Eve and they went to dinner downstairs. They went back and forth to the room and quickly made very elaborate changes to their ensembles, including (wildly varying) wigs for Nanaw, during the course of the meal, pretending to be different people each time. Nanaw was mega-weird.

Viola Harkbill (elderly ward of Mom's back in 1993) believing that Mom's shirt (actually reading "Peace on Earth") said "Peach on the Beach."

Aileen (family friend) was cooking beans in a giant pot and her breast famously fell in.

Aileen called the Emergency Ward, inexplicably, the "Merchant's Ward."

This thread has also made me realize what a immutably redneck family I really come from. You can cross the Henley St. Bridge, but there's no going back.

AN

"merchant's ward" is pretty lolsouthern

Oh, there's more in the Aileen vocabulary:

very cordy veins = vericose veins
hysterical rectum = hysterectomy
minoleum = linoleum

Her name was pronounced "AL-een", too.

I should ask my Mom for more Aileen-isms. She was a nut.

On a hike through the woods my grandpa pulled a persimmon off a tree, took a small bite and pretended that it was ready to eat. He gave the rest to me, but it was still super astringent and it felt like my mouth was stuffed with cotton balls for the next ten minutes. Grandpa thought it was hilarious.

Ryan Ray was my Mom's BFF's kid, and he was my age. He used to look down his elastic waist-banded shorts and proclaim "Ravioli." He once took a crap in his Scooby Doo-themed underwear while Mom was babysitting him at Belleville. "I pooped my Scooby-Doos" was how he confessed to the deed, and he continued to say this for the duration of the nineties, IIRC.

it just occurred to me that Ryan Ayr would be the best name ever

Interesting you should say that, because he went through a phase of saying his name was "Nayr." I guess lots of kids go through a backwards-name phase, though.

shudda been 'Yarn' for the palindrome

ftp

Roxy, you should write books!

wr roxbook

Tape, I may write a book about my family someday. It's low on the list, though.

huge poster of mick jagger in white trousers with bulging lace up crotch was placed on my childhood bedroom wall to cover the area where they had run out of wallpaper.

Drew punched a hole through the wall (?) between his room and Heather and Kelly's room. It stayed unrepaired for ages and was covered up with a Jon Bon Jovi poster on Heather's side. It was soon discovered that the hole was at the level of Bon Jovi's swimsuit region and Drew would poke his finger through there to be hilarious.

― rox qua rox (roxymuzak), Friday, December 12, 2008 11:09 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark

ha, i hadn't even read this post until after i posted that.

this is the classic story in my fam.

For my cousin's wedding reception, circa 1989, they had hired a DELUXE wedding DJ with wacky routines for a lot of the songs including, if i remember correctly, a Michael Jackson impersonator and--when he played "I Heard It Through The Grapevine"--a dude dancing from out of the wings in a giant felt California Raisin costume! Driving home, my grandma says to the entire car, "That reception was so nice. The only thing I didn't understand was the purple potato."

My first sentence was "gimme the A." I was asking for the A-B volume of the Encyclopedia, which was on the top shelf of the dining room bookshelves. I liked the A-B volume cause it had a colorful laminate in the middle showing layers of human anatomy -- one showed skin, one showed musculature, one showed internal organs, and one, my favorite, showed the circulatory system.

Kelly's daughter Madeline's first sentence was "Er's cachi?" This meant "Is that your coffee?" Clasic Robinson stuff.

Er's chaki?

Her second sentence was "Hey puppy, er's ball?"

Not my family but still good:

Four year son, in a fit of rebellion, names his new stuffed bunny "Cigarette." Later, he feels bad about it and changes the bunny's name to "Fragrance."

haha kids can be the best

Rox, I love these stories. Tears streaming down my face! Definitely work on that book!

Dad putting Vicks Vapo Rub on Fiona one night when she was about 6. She was being silly so Dad jokingly swiped some Vaporub under her nose as well. She cried all night.

Fiona and Adam rig up a flying fox (ie zip line) with some old skipping ropes from the landing of the front porch to a not-very-grown tree in the middle of the front yard. Adam goes first. Lands flat on his back as soon as he steps of the 'launch' pad. Fiona laughs hysterically.

Fiona and I tell Adam that white pepper doesn't really make you sneeze. We convince him to sniff some out of his hand.
It made him sneeze. All day. And all night. And we laughed and laughed...

The house on Stonewall was situated on a very tall hill. Drew cried wolf about so much shit that when he came into the kitchen and informed Mom that her car was rolling down the hill, she completely ignored it. It really had rolled down the hill, though.

Me, Mum, Adam and Fiona lying on Mum's bed having a massive tickle fight. Mum shoves Adam away, he falls off the bed and puts his foot through the bedroom window. We told Dad that Mum broke the window. Mum told us it was our fault for being 'silly buggers'.

Getting ready for school. Toddler-age Adam, outside for some reason, finds an empty cat food tin with the lid still attached in the garbage. He sticks his hand in it. His hand gets stuck, and bleeds like a stuck pig all the way into the house, through the kitchen, all over my school bag and my bicycle helmet. Never did get the blood stains off my helmet.

Fiona and I at the beach, trying to surf on a small yellow plastic kickboard. I held the board underwater, she holds onto my shoulders and steps on to the board, and I let go of the board. The board shoots straight up out of the water and knocks out her front tooth.

Kelly "fooding" cars with the neighbor boys (covering them in bananas, bread, etc.)

Spring 1993: Drew was pissed at me for striking his Ultima: Runes of Virtue game from the books. He knew that every single day after school for ages I had habitually gone into the unoccupied middle bedroom and sat down to play Nintendo. He moved the chair, and I never noticed. CRACK

I'm amazed that after all of this you managed to grow up so well adj, norma, alive.

surviving dad and drew is an ongoing process, tbh

Heather and I playing with pool furniture in the pool. She tells me to put my head through the lawn chaise (lol) and I do, and immediately start sinking, but my legs are through the other end, so I can't do anything about it. This goes down in history as one of the dumbest, most pointless things we've ever done.

I as 15 at the time.

(btw Heather = Nijoli)

My brother and I called penguins pigwicks because this is what they were called. It turned out Venice was the best place in the world because there you could chase pigwicks all day, calling their name, flapping your arms and charging into the mass of them without ever seeing the end of it.

My brother and I called airplanes morgans because this is the sound they made, the ones with propellers anyway. If you stood in the yard staring up at the sky and said morgan morgan morgan over and over and over again, there would eventually be airplanes.

My brother and I called turn indicators tinkorns, because this is the sound they made, the song going tinkorn tinkorn tadaladala. Once when our cousin Susan was looking after us in the summer, we asked her boyfriend Sammy if we could break his car, a lime green Gremlin. He said, yes, so we did, smashing out the speedometer glass and breaking off the tinkorn stick. This didn't go over well.

Our neighbors lived on a farm that had been in their family for ages. There were stories about his grandmother (the grandmother of the father neighbor), who was said to have been strange and to have collected images of owls. Once after a night of heavy drinking, she entered the living room, told the assembled guests "time to go", and threw a handful of shotgun shells into the fire.

Nanaw informed Mamaw (lol @ the south) that she needed a rose costume for a school play the next day before going to bed.

― rox qua rox (roxymuzak), Friday, December 12, 2008 6:26 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

More about this: Nanaw's lifelong BFF Catherine also had to wear a rose costume that day. Her family was incredibly poor and her costume was made out of newspaper. This has gone down in history as a very sad tale in spite of the fact that Catherine has now been rich for years and lives in a nice condo overlooking the river and we all thought she was God when we were kids.

My brother and I called turn indicators tinkorns, because this is the sound they made

quite otm

We used to call indicators and the warning lights on high hills to warn aeroplanes "blinkonks" for similar reasons.

"A slice of balogna found on the (woodgrain) wall. Many accusations. An enduring family mystery."

Not book. Song.

As recently as a month ago Kelly accused Drew of putting the baloney on the wall. This incident occured in the 1970s.

Roxy, if it helps any, there was an AL-een in my family, too.

we used to drive to connecticut to visit my grandparents and would bring the dog. we had some shoestring licorice one time and we were feeding him little pieces the whole trip and laughing so hard because he loved it so much. when we were a few miles from the destination he puked little pieces of red licorice all over the car.

"I like to fart and I am crazy."

once when my brother was 12 he told my mom he was going to 'take ellen [his friend] home.' ellen lived a few blocks away so my mom thought they were walking together. it turned out he drove her. every time this story is told miles gets a year younger.

I had a phase of reading the back issues of Punch in our town library. Because of something I read in a cartoon, I decided to ask my mom what V.D. is. Uptight Presbyterisn bollocking hilarity ensued.

i was reading a library book that mentioned "marcella, the eighth grade slut." i was about the age i should be learning what the word "slut" meant but i had no idea so i marched into my parents' room and said "what's a slut?" and my mom was like "um, a girl who wears a lot of makeup."

I was reading the Emerald City of Oz at age nine or so and came across a sentence that was something like "Oh my lands!" ejaculated Aunt Em. So I shouted across the room, "Hey dad, what's 'ejaculated' mean?" He blushed and told me to walk over there. He whispered what it meant so the other kids wouldn't hear. I was revolted, and it absolutely made no sense. I showed him the sentence like, 'dad, but that doesn't make sense!' and he said, "Oh, I forgot – it means 'exclaimed.'"

It is 1996. I am 10. We're staying in a hotel room with my dad somewhere in Tennessee on our way to Indiana. Dad has gone to pick up pizza from somewhere. My 6 year old sister and I are jumping from one bed to the other, trying to high five in midair between the beds like so

http://xs134.xs.to/xs134/08500/diagram974.png

My sister slips and knocks her forehead on the headboard. She is bleeding from the head and I am 10 so I run to the ice machine and fill the ice bucket and come back and proceed to press her forehead directly to the ice. Later we eat pizza. She still has the scar.

awesome!

my dad and mom get in some argument when i'm about 3 or 4. argument concludes with my dad throwing a small but fully decorated christmas tree down a flight of stairs.

(nb: i have no memory of this, it's just part of the family lore. all my actual christmas-tree memories are happy ones.)

Speaking of baloney... One winter, a friend of mine and I stuck firecrackers in hot dog and set it off on the back porch. It blew up, spalttering the wall with hot dog pulp. Late the next spring, almost into summer, I was helping my mom cleaning off the porch to get things ready for barbecue season. For some reason, she notices these wads of grayish gunk stuck to the siding. "What is this stuff?" she says. "I dunno," I say. Then my mom gets down on her hands and knees and scratches some of the stuff off the wall and smells it. "Smells like baloney," she says. I almost die from trying not to laugh so I won't give it away.

My brother and I were riding our bikes to the shops, and there was a path with a speed hump on it we had to ride over. Grant pretends to take a flying start at the ramp, narrating to himself that he's a crazy flying daredevil, and oh look he's hit the jump and he's off... and he's still in the air.... yes... still in the air... he's still going!

That was almost 30 years ago and he still reminds me he is "still in the air" *every time* he rings or emails me. Evil Kanevil got nothin' on my bro.

When I was about 13, I got in this huge fight with my brother and kicked his ass. Afterwards, he ran upstairs to his room for a while, then came back down in elbow pads, knee pads and a catcher's mask, holding his hockey stick like a broadsword. He came at me with it, screaming his head off, so I ran into my room and slammed the door. He chopped the hockey stick through the door, Shining-style. Once we'd calmed down, we were both freaked out about getting in trouble, so I stuck a C-3P0 poster on the door to cover the hole. A few years later, I finally took the poster down. "Holy shit!" says my mom. "What the hell happened to your door?" "Oh, that's always been like that," I said. I explained it like it was something we all knew about and thought was funny. She seemed confused and didn't push the issue.

When we played under the sprinkler in summer to cool off, if we got too cold from the water, we'd start singing "Daddy Cool" by Boney M, to make the sprinkler "go away" (it was one of those ones that arched back and forth over the lawn). For some reason invoking that song was essential to the process.

My then-80-year-old grandmother was helping us move a few years ago, and saw my didgeridoo, a souvenir from a trip to Australia. She asked what it was, and I explained it to her and demonstrated. Later on, according to my wife, while I was out, Grandma walked up to it, carefully cradled it, put her mouth up to it, and without actually blowing into it, simply went, "Woooowoowoooooowoowoowooooowooowoowoow."

Trayce that RULES.

My parents had a small avocado plant growing in a large pot in the dining room, and the cat used to pee in it all the time. Once, during dinner, the cat hunkered down for a whiz, so my dad jumped up, picked it up by the scruff and started spanking it. The cat just kept on going, while my dad held it at arm's length over the pot, his hand soaked in cat pee. After that, the pot was pretty much surrendered to the cat.

We're on a long interstate car trip when I'm eight, and my dad decides to give my brother (age 5) and me some useful life advice. "It's very important, if you ever start your own business, not to include your own name as part of the business name, otherwise when you sell the business you also sell the right to use your name." My brother and I nod wisely.

When I was in early high school, me and my brothers used to sing silly songs a lot, as you do. Some of these were random TV commercials and things we'd heard in passing, and one was a song we'd heard on the ABC test pattern one day. We didn't know the song, so we'd just sing it as "hoo hoo HOOOOOOT, hooo hooo HOOOOOOO!" which was the only bits we knew.

Some years later I discovered that song was in fact "Lorelei" by the Cocteau Twins.

Once when we were staying out at our cousin's farm, all of us kids (my four cousins and 2 brothers and me) decided to put on an impromptu show, using the wooden outside deck as the stage, and singing along to a boom-box tape player.

My cousin came bounding out to the strains of "You Can't Stop the Music", and promptly kicked out the power lead to the boom box, stopping the song in its tracks.

Oh we did laff.

my mom killed a copperhead snake that appeared on our porch one day after coming home from school.

When she was a kid, my mom made a belt of the tails of red squirrels she'd shot.

Two of my cousins, then aged probably 2 and 4, decided it would be fun to scoot across the carpet on their faces, and ended up with identical severe rug burns on their foreheads and noses.

Once when we were staying out at our cousin's farm, all of us kids (my four cousins and 2 brothers and me) decided to put on an impromptu show, using the wooden outside deck as the stage, and singing along to a boom-box tape player.

My cousin came bounding out to the strains of "You Can't Stop the Music", and promptly kicked out the power lead to the boom box, stopping the song in its tracks.

Oh we did laff.

― Trayce, Monday, December 15, 2008 5:19 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

This is uproarious!!!!

Whoa, do you mean the Village People's "You Can't Stop the Music"??

I used to love that song in 8th grade, in ways that I never new could be deemed ironic. The flute/orchestra buildup was unstoppable!

Yeah I do! Actually in retrospect it's kind of funny to think of a kid who is now an Anglican church minister dancing to a Village People song... haaaw. Ah, days of innocence.

My older sister, at age 4, in a restaurant with my parents. She always had avery loud voice. Sees my dad cooling off his coffee with some ice. She asks, "Daddy, where'd you get the ice, out of your goddamned Coke?"

!

HAW!

the familys out at my sisters college for graduation - the whole week my dad is making weird oblique references to something me and my sister cant quite put our fingers on until after a few days we realize he thinks shes gay despite the presence of a long time boyfriend and is trying to be all cool no big deal abt it - the misunderstanding stemmed from my sister casually saying something like "shes great" abt her gay roommate - this is one of the best things to tease my dad abt

I used to make up words that sounded funny, and try to use them in conversation. One day I was about 9 and making the bed and said 'oh, fucken fimmus.' My mum had a heart attack.

~12. Mother screaming at me (that's all she ever did, see) and this time for some reason it pushed me over the edge and in sheer frustration I shoved my hand through a window. Mother only concerned about the blood on the floor, not the tiny shards of glass in my bloodstream. The scar is still there.

Grade 2. Used the gents at school, locked the cubicles from inside and crawled out beneath the door. That afternoon the whole grade was summoned to the common area and nobody was to leave until the child who locked all the cubicles and made a boy poo his pants owned up. They let us go after a few minutes.

(I am an only child so 99.9% of anecdotes feature me in some way)

My 8yo cousin (we are the same age) got mumps and I didn't, so our mothers made me kiss him and lick his food all day. I never contracted mumps.

Another cousin (~6yo) spent an entire day saying 'COTTAGE CHEESE!!' nonstop. We never discovered why.

Crepey neighbours executed the following:

- standing naked on his balcony staring at my mother
- taking dead animals to other neighbours' houses and shoving them in kids' faces when their parents were out
- leaving a car in the carport with a pipe leading from the exhaust to the window (one of them disappeared that day)
- waiting for my father to stand near the adjoining fence, then suddenly whipping out a camera + tape recorder + disorientingly bright light and screaming like banshees, hoping to make my father panic and lash out (he didn't)
- jumping another neighbour's fence and killing her chickens
- hiding behind the same neighbour's garage until she emerged, then jumping out and yelling 'boo'
- jumping everyone's fences and spreading what looked like dog poison but wasn't

Rather cute boy in high school kept saying 'I love you' to me. One day a female prostitute turned up at my house, then the next day he badgered me for ~20 minutes asking if anything unusual happened yesterday. A year later he took his life.

Oh shit that wasn't family, sorry.

Okay, well my mum abused the crap out of the prostitute (who was crying) and told her to get the hell off the property. There you go.

A mormon and his white-lacy-dress-wearing daughter knock on the door, wishing to sell us a lord. My mother, ever the diplomat, tells them to bugger off. They leave, our (friendly) border collie jumps on them hoping for pats, my mum yells 'down satan!'

We move into a new house 0.5km from all the television towers. We get shit reception. My dad nails a yagi antenna to the underside of the floor. The reception does not improve. He is not sure why.

While we are waiting for aforementioned house to be built (I am ~6), we move into my grandmother's flat. She kicks us out because she hates people. To mitigate this we move into a caravan. My parents spend two weeks banging their heads on the roof and swearing. To alleviate the pain dad gives me a copy of Can't Stop the Music on LP.

About 7yo. I wake up in the middle of the night to see dad peering at me over the edge of the bed. It takes me some weeks to sleep again, an achievement which is summarily destroyed by dad sneaking into my room at midnight and setting up all my plush toys in seance formation.

My teenage cousin starts going out with a butcher. Her mother makes so many crap meat-related jokes that she refuses to bring the next boyfriend home.

Leaving Auckland, late for a plane. Father slams on his brakes in a panic about something, realises it was nothing, then quickly releases. Kombi behind us slams too, fails to unslam, other car ploughs into the back of it. We leave the country.

On holiday + drinking heavily with brother-in-law. Walking from pub to cab rank across some kind of grassy patch, brother-in-law walks in massive strides like an idiot (because drunk obv), takes a huge lunge and falls cleanly down a hole.

AA y'are a treat

Sister-in-law playing some car-racing gameboy game, concentrating with terrifying fervour. I ask her what she's playing. She says 'CAR'

Dad being driven by a client called Gary who has one arm (polio claimed the other one), flying along some road at incredible speed in an old man's sports car. A manual. WITH ONE ARM. Anyway, some guy in a panel van cuts him up. The guy's mobile number is on the back of the van, so Gary calls the number (it routes to the guy's boss) and says he's a crap driver. Two minutes later the van stops across the road, blocking the car my dad is in. The guy gets out of the van, screams a collection of insults and punches the windows.

Sounds like CAR isn't so fun a game when it's not on the Gameboy.

My mother had only seen snow in photograph until she emigrated to the UK from Jamaica when she was 19 years old; consequently she absolutely adores the stuff.

So much so that when I and my sisters were small kids, whenever it snowed overnight she would actually wake us up in the middle of the night to and drag us out to play in the new snow.

wishing to sell us a lord

ahaha nice and succinct and PERFECT for the next set of Sunday brunch jaydubs on my doorstep. "No, we don't buy door-to-door God!" "But our Lord is not for sale" "Yet..."

stone monkey's mom otm

miniature family anecdotes: tragic pet edition

-I have told this on ilx before i think but when i was around 10, my mom put the hamster cage on top of the washing machine while it was running, so that she could clean the area where the cage was normally kept. The hamsters had a heart attack and died.

-My six-year-old cousin bathed her kittens and then hung them up by the tails to dry. They did not die but one of them had a permanently crooked tail while the other was just terrified of everything after that.

-Another cousin somehow convinced his parents to buy him a chick as a pet even though they lived in city suburbs and prob had no business raising one. But raise it they did until one day my cousin accidentally steps on the thing while it was walking around in their backyard. The chick, which was now almost a chicken, walks a few steps more, made a small clucking noise, tipped over and died.

we were visiting some family friends who lived about 3 or 4kms from us one evening. we left kind of late and by that time my 4yr old sister had fallen asleep. she had stayed plenty of times, so my parents decided not to wake her.

sometime in the wee hours of the morning i awake to the sound of these horrifying screams - seriously, it sounded like someone being tortured - and so does everyone else. at the front door we find my little sister banging away, practically in an hysterical fit.

she had woken up, freaked out when she couldn't find our parents, and RUN home. at the age of four. it was also incredibly rainy and windy that night. i don't even know how she found her way home in the dark.

two of my cousins (kids of my dad's brother and sister, respectively) are currently "secretly" dating each other even though the rest of the extended family actually knows and we're all trying desperately to pretend that it's not happening because, you know, ew.

another cousin recently came back from overseas not knowing anything about it so my brother and i tell her and warn her not to mention anything if she sees or hears anything weird. Her reaction at first was "oh my god really?! wow." two minutes of silence and then she goes "EUGGGHHH!"

Wow at this:

Rather cute boy in high school kept saying 'I love you' to me. One day a female prostitute turned up at my house, then the next day he badgered me for ~20 minutes asking if anything unusual happened yesterday. A year later he took his life.

― some duomas (Autumn Almanac), Thursday, December 18, 2008 4:17 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

What did you suppose was the explanation, AA?

I'm really not sure, but it was 15 years ago and I still lose sleep about it.

My father looking at my breakfast from across the table. (I was 3). Me looking back at him, then saying angrily: "DON'T LOOK AT MY BACON!!"

many more. coming soon.

XD XD

my grandfather used to drive with his knees whilst yodelling, then singing this old Harvard fight song.

As a child, my mother used to steal roses from the garden at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and give them to the nuns at school, saying that they were 'for the baby Jesus.'

okay, now i have to go.

this is the best thread ever, tho.

Drew and Heather were talking tonight about not being able to sleep one Christmas Eve because of a loud, repetitive bleeping. The next morning they received, I think, Pong as a gift, and Dad had stayed up all night playing it.

^^^ story really belongs to a woman 20 years older than rox.

Drew and Heather

get one reading comprehension skill before you get froggy all over another frogfree thread lib

i had these relatives (some variation of aunt/uncle that i don't understand because i'm dumb at genealogy) that i used to dread seeing at family functions. one was this old guy who had really long nose hair and messed up teeth, and the other was his wife, this crazy lady who i thought was retarded. recently, i asked my mom how they were related to us and what ever happened to them (besides death, since they were old and this was over 20 years ago), but the weird part was that she had no idea who the hell i was talking about.

one time my cousin jim asked my second cousin sheri (who was about 30 years older than us) how she was related to our family in the middle of a family gathering. he told her that he thought she was just a friend of the family or something. from that point on, even when we were well into our 20's, every time she saw us, she invariably asked us if we knew how she was related to us. to this day, there's no worse sound entering my ear than her husky, disgusting voice asking me if i knew how she was related to us.

i had imaginary friends as a kid. there's a home video of me rattling them off to my dad, who was interviewing me in front of the camera. apparently, the first one died of a drug overdose, the second one died after his dad shot him, and the third one died after he ate a poison strawberry.

At TGI Fridays Katy ordered a cheeseburger. When the waitress asked what she'd like on the burger she paused for 1.5 seconds and said "cheese". She was a teenager when this happened.

At age 3 or 4 when Wheel of Fortune came on she would join in the opening shout of "WHEEL! OF! FORTUNE!" only she would shout "GEORGE! IN! HIDIN'!" instead.

On road trips we would sit all 3 of us kids in the back seat, with Kelly (the youngest) in the middle. Katy (passenger side) often would get upset with me for looking out her window. "Daddy Nick's looking out my window!". 2 or 3 of those and my dad would shout back "everybody look out your own window!". Poor Kelly never really had her own window. Not until we got the van anyway.

ha, there should be a comma between Daddy and Nick

I can't believe I hadn't opened this thread til tonight. I thought it said MINOTAUR family anecdotes.

HA!

Our neighbors across the street and to the left on Bellevile Ave. -- the house I mostly grew up in, from ages 3-18 -- were the Sch4zadas (though there were also kids in the family with the surnames Ign4tio, L0fgren and Z3rkel. None of us ever really got the story on this straight; in fact Heather and I were trying to figure out how they were all related today over lunch, and kept getting mixed up). A few of the older members of the family spoke Tagalog. Anyway, we often went over for dinner at their house, which was a big affair that was worked on basically all day. I clearly remember pushing a "dispense" button on some kind of rice machine at their house at about age 3 -- of course rice spilled out all over the floor.

lol @ Bellevile. It's Belleville, of course.

Once I was getting seconds on some kind of meat dish at their house -- I was probably about seven years old -- and Chris, the mom, kept saying "If you continue to eat that, you'll become very smart!" I didn't get it, but she and my mom seemed to find it hilarious. Later I found out that it was pork brains.

Eddie Z3rkel, the oldest son, started a neighborhood breakdancing team called the Hydraulic Poppers. Nijoli was a member, and her breakdancing name was "Easy Ace," though my brother tells me that this was because a different member retired and she inherited his shirt.

Only I remember this, and very clearly, no-one else. In Norway, cars drive on the right side of the road.

At about 3-4, was taught that when crossing the street, look to the left first, then right, then left again. Asking why (and why not e.g. the other way around), Mom answered: "Because left is where the cars come from first!" I had to spend ages with limited vocabulary trying to argue her out of the delusion that people's driving would care about which side of the road we stood. Didn't work, lol semantics. (I got her point shortly afterwards I think.)

Also, SHOCK at learning (a good deal later than the above) that Mom + Dad hadn't known each other forever, but sort of met each other when they were way older than I was then. (Not really family anecdote, sry)

a recent exchange between my five-year-old niece and her teacher:

TEACHER: did you go anywhere on holiday this year?
NIECE: yes, we went to Blackpool.
TEACHER: oh, did you go on the donkeys?
NIECE: *rolls eyes*, don't be silly, we went in the car!

I made a film called "The Life of Mozart" for music class when I was 12. It started off with my 10 year old male cousin 'giving birth' to my 6 year old male cousin (well, it was meant to be the 'life' of Mozart). Immediately after this scene, the horrified teacher turned the TV off and lectured me, and the whole class, on allowing children of a young age to be photographed in such a way. Eight years later the rumour that I made a porno/snuff film with family members still occasionally permeates the air.

^^^lololololololololololol

I can't bear to dig it out again but I'm pretty sure it looked just as wrong as it sounds. We also did Titanic a few years earlier, hand on window scene and all, oh God, think I'm gonna quietly and discretely burn some of those tapes.

no u must youtube them asap

Haha that makes me feel a little less bad about the porny lezzing it up I used to make my barbie dolls do. Well I didnt own a Ken doll, they had to make do somehow!

Mom explained to Blakely, after seeing Bee Movie, that the story's plot is essentially true. She told her that scientists believe that without bees, crops would die, etc. etc. Blakely looked at her strangely, and finally said: "Bees don't talk."

Chase @ Xmas, tried to break the record for not blinking. At some point later on, he asked Mom if she had any toothpicks.

My favorite quote of Nanaw's, told while we were laying out in the sun, re: Fred (her boyfriend) being clingy and always giving her stuff. "He beat me to death with a Hallmark card."

Also, re: Mom freaking out over Heather's nose piercing: "I don't care if she pierces her rear end, if SHE likes it."

Kathryn Ward's father, who was called "Pa" by everyone, said lots of stuff wrong (much like Aileen). For example, he called the Hyatt Regency the Hatty Regan, and said Sony and Cherry for Sonny and Cher.

Bob and Curly left a wee Nanaw stranded up on a billboard.

It was her earliest memory.

oh my god i am dying.

My uncle and his friends exploring an old rotted out house in fields around Andover, Mass. Uncle goes upstairs, then (from a window in a bedroom of sorts) watches his friends running away from house yelling. Suddenly, there's a man yellin at the bottom of the stairs, who then runs up the stairs with a baseball bat in his hand. Uncle jumps out of the window (luckily it wasn't too tall, he only broke his arm and twisted a leg) and runs all the way home. He was about ten when this happened, so it was about '62.

My Dad once came home from the NYC St. Patrick's Day parade stinking drunk and wearing a cop's uniform complete with a real badge. He'd been drinking with some cop he met at the bar and they got so drunk my Dad convinced him to trade outfits. My Mom was scared he'd get in trouble so she threw the uniform down the garbage shoot.

We went into NYC to see the tree lighting for my birthday once year and brought a bunch of friends. When we were getting ready to leave my parents hailed two cabs to take us back to wherever the car was parked. My mom was trying to herd all the kids into the cabs when one started struggling and saying get your hands off me etc. She kept trying while keeping an eye on the other girls until the kid called her a bitch. She looked down and realized that she'd been trying to shove a male little person into the cab.

o no!

loooool

My Dad once came home from the NYC St. Patrick's Day parade stinking drunk and wearing a cop's uniform complete with a real badge. He'd been drinking with some cop he met at the bar and they got so drunk my Dad convinced him to trade outfits. My Mom was scared he'd get in trouble so she threw the uniform down the garbage shoot.

Roffle I recall you telling this story once elsewhere, I freaking love this one =)

At Christmas, my grandma gave all the male members of our familty these telescoping magnet tool things. My uncle promptly used his to rip my sister's big hoop earing out of her ear.

I'm 8 years old and riding with my dad in the car. We pass a theater advertising Gorillas in the Mist as a coming attraction. I've never heard of this movie before and find this title absolutely hilarious. My dad starts making up a song about "Gorillas in the Mist," to the tune of The Doors' "Riders on the Storm." I join in and soon we're improvising all sorts of silly lyrics that rhyme with "gorillas in the mist" ("I think I'll make a list/Of all the girls I've kissed," etc.) This goes on for some time. POSTSCRIPT: Whenever I hear "Riders on the Storm," there's always a brief moment where I think "hey, this song totally rips off "Gorillas in the Mist."

did your dad sound like im in doors

(roxy, i <3 this thread to death.)

did your dad sound like im in doors

solid gold

> said Sony and Cherry for Sonny and Cher.

dad has a colleague who always calls it "Toys 'N' Us".

did your dad sound like im in doors

!

Wanting to escape the drudgery of our grandparents, we decide to climb out the window (located on the first floor). We can't escape through main door cause dog might eat us. (Stupid of course, she'd have licked us silly.) Cousin jumps to the ground, I'm halfway hanging out and suddenly decide I can't do it. I begin to yell 'n' scream while cousin is trying to convince me to jump. Grandfather has to drag me back inside.

Love eating blood sausages. One day I ask: so what is it made of?
Answers my dad: BLOOD OF PIGS OF COURSE!
I never eat a blood sausage again even the piece that's on my fork at the time.

For the past 2 years, my parent's answering machine message has begun with a solemn greeting of "Shalom", spoken by my dad. We aren't Jewish.

At a trailhead on the Blue Ridge Parkway, dad takes out map to give confused stranger directions to botanical gardens, inexplicably pronounces "botanical" as "botonical". Me to sister: "Don't forget to make fun of him for that as soon as we get back in the car."

― With a little bit of gold and a Peja (bernard snowy), Friday, December 12, 2008 9:02 AM (1 month ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this never made me laugh before but today it did

(this is one of those classic threads that I completely re-read every time it's revived, like the "I can't turn my face into a heart" one)

My grandmother, my mother, and myself are on a plane. I am 9. We are flying to Indiana to meet the in-laws. A young black man is sitting across from us. Over the course of the 4 hour flight we learn he is in law school, plays the guitar, and might end up marrying his current girlfriend. He gets up to leave during a stop in St. Louis and my grandmother says "Bye bye negrito!"

omg

omg

― roxymuzak, Monday, January 26, 2009 12:01 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

omg

― roxymuzak, Monday, January 26, 2009 12:01 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

― latebloomer, Monday, 26 January 2009 00:05 (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

omg

― roxymuzak, Monday, January 26, 2009 12:01 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

― latebloomer, Monday, 26 January 2009 00:05 (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

― a hoy hoy, Monday, 26 January 2009 00:12 Bookmark

Most definitely.

i have a cap over my front bottom tooth where my sister threw a rock at me and knocked it out (one of my first permanent teeth). it was all because i wouldn't let her listen to my michael jackson thriller album. i would shut my door and turn the volume on my turntable so low that i would have to lay my head right against the speaker (no headphones) to hear it. the rock was indoors because her 4 year old sunday school class had decorated them with felt & glitter to say "Jesus Loves Me".

loool

When Roberto Spiralli was 3 he took a crayon and wrote his sister's name on the wall. When his mother confronted him he, of course, blamed his sister since it was her name and all but she saw right through his lie seeing as the sister in question was still an infant.

We lived in Key West when I little and when I was about three we were out at a restuatant and sat next to a table of very effeminate men. I observed our neighbors for a bit and then loudly proceeded to ask my mother why the men next to us were "talking like ladies". They totally heard but thankfully found it v funny.

The other night my German-born Dad who still gets confused with words every now and then asked me if I'd gotten my WD-40 yet so that I could do my taxes.

A couple weeks ago he asked me what the eureka was on the body. After about five mins of Q&A I figured out he meant urethra.

He once told me he had something going on with dry skin and needed to see a dermatologist.

oops - what he meant was dermatologist what he said was taxidermist.

At age 6 or so I knocked on Drew's door to alert him that Headbanger's Ball was on. There was a band with long hair and all, and I figured he would be interested. "Drew, do you like Black and Blue?" Without opening the door: "Black and Blue SUCKS!"

Incidentally, he was otm.

My mom was a real goody two-shoes at the Catholic school that she attended and my uncle apparently resented this, even though she was like six years older than him. When he was in 2nd grade he stole her report card and wrote a bunch of things like "Mary is an asshole" in the comments section in crude 8 year old writing, as if the nuns were giving her negative comments.

My older brother and I are in 2nd and 3rd grade. We are in bed on a Sunday night, but not asleep. Instead we are whispering to each other. We have only a vague idea of what "fuck" means, but we are making jokes by saying "Fuck so-and-so" or "Fuck the toilet" and giggling.

Then my brother in a moment of inspiration says "Fuck the friendly Texaco dealer!" We repeat this so often and laugh so loudly my dad has to yell at us several times to be quiet and go to sleep.

Drew's imaginary friends were named Dodle and Jubidee (sp????)

mine were called maggie and pumpkin, but i must have had a limited imagination because i only ever spoke to them on my toy phone, never in person.

Mom had a spring from a cuckoo clock (which was being worked on by dad, with a few other people clustered right around it) go through her left eye while in the other room on the phone, right after saying "Hello." She says the most common question she gets about this is "Who was on the other line?" She doesn't remember, and maybe never knew.

― rox qua rox (roxymuzak), Friday, December 12, 2008 6:22 PM (3 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

A few days ago I visited Mom, and she showed me a photograph of herself with an eyepatch on from this incident. She had a bouffant and looked awesome.

My grandfather (Ellar) and his brother (Mack) married my grandmother ("Bunny") and her sister ("Toots"). (That's right, two brothers marrying two sisters.) That was in the 1930s. And for whatever reason, when the newly released Gone With The Wind came to town, Mack took Bunny to see it, rather than her own husband taking her. So Toots held a grudge, and refused to go see it when Mack offered to take her. She refused again when it was re-released in the '50s, and again in the '60s. And when it finally aired on TV in '76, she wouldn't even watch it then. So she never did see it. (Weird footnote: Mack and Ellar were actually named for their mother's family, name of McKellar. Yet Ellar was born first! Like five years earlier or something.)

(More fun names, this time a pair of great-aunts, twin sisters, long since deceased: Pearl and Ruby.)

My parents went to a sex shop when I was about three. They figured it wasn't so bad to drag me along. I run inside the shop, behold the fake tits and proclaim I want a candle while touching them.

My wife's family includes a woman named "Hydri", in honour of the hydrogen bomb which had just been 'invented' when she was born.

I had a pet goat named Chaunty. It went crazy and Brandt took it into the woods and shot it in the head. Have not forgiven this today.

My grandmother's mother and grandmother had the maiden names of "Ball" and "Cox" respectively - anecdotes of traits inherited from her side of the family got the reaction you'd expect.

The other day, speaking to my dad on the telephone, he asked me what my thesis was about for the first time ever. I explained that it had to do with modeling a path toward coal-free electricity sector in the U.S. by 2030. He earnestly said "Just do me a favor and let me know when it's time to head for the hills".

haha!

My grandfather was one of the stage managers for the Monterey Pop Festival and ran on stage when The Who started trashing their equipment because he (and the other locals managing the show) thought they were random hooligans and not the actual band.

Before my Dad went on a work trip to the US with his long-standing girlfriend Ros, he called me apropos of nothing at work in the middle of the day to cheerfully tell me the details of a new will they were making in case the plane went down with both of them on it. It was several weeks till the trip and I was usually home in the evenings, with a working phone.

When a copy of the will arrived, it was accompanied by round-robin covering letters. Ros's contained loving words for family and friends. Dad's was a to-the-point one-pager addressed to me and my brother, typewritten, signed 'Dad' in ink with 'Dad' typed underneath.

hahahaha

Me, my sisters and my neighbours cheering as cars ran over a spit-filled bowling shoe we found at the bus-stop.

Dad blowing off his eyebrows on cracker night when he poured petrol on the bonfire to "help get it started".

...
cracker night?

Firecracker Night (Queen's Birthday long weekend). Sadly now outlawed by the Government due to widespread injuries and bungers in letterboxes.

Dad almost setting fire to the house whilst wielding a blowtorch during a DIY dishwasher installation.

bungers

Aunty Lyn's Barbie doll ending up with a burnt and melted face after Uncle Neville took her camping in the backyard.

Dad cutting off the top of his index finger with a circular saw during house renovations. All my mum heard was "Oh no."

Me insisting to my parents that the Craft teacher requested we bring in Skyhooks for a project. My mum gently suggested that the teacher may have asked for "cup-hooks".

Walking to school and seeing my grandfather getting a driving lesson from my Scripture teacher.

Another cracker night: Dad dressing up in some weird home-cobbled Santa-style outfit complete with a beard made from a mop, sneaking up behind the bonfire in the dark and bursting out of the bush to yell at us "EVERYBODY'S GONNA PAY".

Mum burying our pet duck in a kitchen drawer.

A policeman busting Dad in his underwear carrying a TV down the street from my grandparents' house on Christmas Eve.

A relative got married, but the vicar wouldn't allow cameras in the church. So the groom's mother got an old handbag, put a camcorder in it, then cut a hole in the side for the lens to shoot through. Resultant footage looked like some covert undercover shit...

Another cracker night: Dad dressing up in some weird home-cobbled Santa-style outfit complete with a beard made from a mop, sneaking up behind the bonfire in the dark and bursting out of the bush to yell at us "EVERYBODY'S GONNA PAY".

― Hard like armour, Sunday, March 29, 2009 11:08 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

LOL

For April Fools Day:

my parents used to put out the toothpaste on our toothbrushes in the morning/evening for us to go brush before school/bed and one april 1st morning they used squeezy cheese instead of toothpaste, we totally fell for it

niice

A relative got married, but the vicar wouldn't allow cameras in the church. So the groom's mother got an old handbag, put a camcorder in it, then cut a hole in the side for the lens to shoot through. Resultant footage looked like some covert undercover shit...

― snoball, Monday, 30 March 2009 10:23 (2 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Yeah, we got one of those as well.

Spring 1993: Drew was pissed at me for striking his Ultima: Runes of Virtue game from the books. He knew that every single day after school for ages I had habitually gone into the unoccupied middle bedroom and sat down to play Nintendo. He moved the chair, and I never noticed. CRACK

― rox qua rox (roxymuzak), Saturday, December 13, 2008 10:42 PM (4 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Drew has beef with my telling of this, stating that he is sure the game was The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening. I think he might just be confused because that was kind of our go-to game that summer.

Eddie Z3rkel, the oldest son, started a neighborhood breakdancing team called the Hydraulic Poppers. Nijoli was a member, and her breakdancing name was "Easy Ace," though my brother tells me that this was because a different member retired and she inherited his shirt.

― rox qua rox (roxymuzak), Friday, December 26, 2008 4:44 PM (4 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

And Kelly informs me that this group was actually called the Hydrolic Poppers (haw). A common sound in our neighborhood was a chorus of voices yelling "car!" and then the sound of a giant piece of cardboard being dragged out of the road.

Drew has beef with my telling of this, stating that he is sure the game was The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening. I think he might just be confused because that was kind of our go-to game that summer.

Nice errata.

Haha oops I accidentally copied that last line twice obviously, sorry

My family did a lot of beefing about anecdotes over the weekend.

Oh man, the summer mom became obsessed with Mario 2, to this day the only video game she has EVER played. This period coincided with the birth of her first grandchild (Madeline of "sugar and lard" fame).

When I was very little I thought that Dad was magic because he could make his teeth wiggle. They were fake teeth.

Nancy's BF gave Peter Tork guitar lessons, this was after he was already in the Monkees.

My dad tells me all these wild stories in the last year which he never used to do, like stories of him out on the tear when he was younger and stuff. I really like that he deems I've reached an age where I can hear them.

That's cute!

My grandpa always made a point of drawing attention to his service in the military during the Korean War, stressing the importance of patriotic duty to America, and so on. After high school, he even got into an argument with my dad where they stopped speaking for months because my grandpa wanted me to go into some Air Force officer's school. I didn't want to go because I would never ever ever ever join the U.S. military. This enraged my grandpa but he took it out on my dad instead.

Later we found out that Grandpa's hallowed years of service during the Korean War all took place in rural Kansas, where he assisted a weatherman.

x-post I know, it's funny.

He had this great one last year, not so miniature but back in the 70s he used to work for the state owned public transport body in Ireland. Anyway he had this sort of club with his friends at the golf club (sounds yuppyish but he's not really) that used to go on trips every year. Anyway all of them would pull strings to make the trip go better, it was like the stonecutters or something. So one year my Dad organised for there to be an extra carriage put on a train for all the guys going on the trip. An extra carriage that was a bar.

Some other dude worked on the meat board or something and so there was 30 steaks etc, and someone else worked in fisheries and there was a load of smoked salmon and stuff. Same deal with booze.

Anyway he describes drinking "3 or 4" bottles of wine on the train. Then he was like "The next thing I remember I was on the stage dancing and there was some half naked woman, it was a cabaret or something. Then I got sick and passed out in the room."

Then he was like "The others woke me up at 7am as I was due to play golf at 7.30am, I was vomiting on the first tee!"

And I was like "Ah yeah so not the best round then?"

"Not the best round??? I shot a 68!"

Love these sort of Dad stories.

I'm so jealous of these kind of stories, because no-one in my family is like that. I mean, a relative may have smoked weed a couple of times in the 70's. And seemingly all my relatives are near-teetotal. In fact I reckon that during university I drank more than my parents have drunk in their entire lives.

haha, same with me. I probably drink more in a MONTH than my parents have in their entire lives (which is pathetic on both ends).

I've also sworn way more than the rest of my family. I've never heard my grandfather say even so much as "shit", a word I use so much that it practically becomes punctuation.

Actually that's not entirely true - the relative who was the groom in the covertly shot wedding video anecdote upthread probably drinks, I don't know, more than a couple of beers a week? And my mother's aunts and uncles were middling-to-moderate on the hellraising scale. Unfortunately they're all dead now.

My mum would get annoyed if you said as much as "jesus", my Dad has been known to swear a bit. Mind you I like sometimes swearing to see their reaction, I've found if it's a funny story you can get away with any expletive in the punchline.

Unfortunately, the only other person in my family who drinks is a major alcoholic deadbeat, so everyone thinks anyone who drinks inevitably becomes worthless.

Actually, lemme convert that into miniature family anecdote form:

My uncle drives a Doritos truck and breeds mosquitoes in his backyard for no reason.

In a way he's kinda living the dream imo

Never heard my mom swear until once she dragged me to see Sugar Ray open for the Goo Goo Dolls (side anecdote: a photo of me in a sequined vest doing a campy pose used to have the place of honor in mom's wallet -- until she replaced it with a photo of Johnny Rzeznik, singer of the Goo Goo Dolls, in like 2003). Mark McGrath is like "say YEEEEAH" and mom says "YEAAAAH!" along with the rest of the crowd, excluding my 20-something y/o self who is dying of embarrassment. Then he's like say "FUCK YEAH!" and my mom goes "FUCK YEAHHH!!!!!!!!!" in a completely manic voice, just totally over the top. I look over at her in a O_O style. She says "What?" I say, "You just said "Fuck yeah."

"No I did not."

<3

Hahahaha awesomeness!

She denies it to this day!

As a visual aid to earlier portions of the thread, this is Crispin Glover in the film Rubin and Ed, but it looks exactly like my uncle Arnold.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v136/primrosehill/arnold.jpg

Not really too much of an anecdote but my dad just said, "She smokes like a fish!" which made me lol. Funnier if imagined in his German accent tbh.

how to smoke like a fish, possibly:

http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/jezebel/2009/01/phelps_516_0102_25518a.jpg

A cop turned his lights on while following behind my mother, who had recently married my dad, attempting to pull her over on Chapman Highway. Mom did not pull over but simply drove the rest of the way home with the cop behind her, pulled into the driveway and walked inside, telling my father "you deal with it!"

I will tell this exactly as Drew told it to me:

Someone (probably Marshall) gave a teenaged Drew the big (maybe 12" in diameter) light from atop a traffic cone, which he had in his bedroom. Drew put it under his shirt and began the bike ride home. Passing a construction site complete with similar lights, Drew noticed that his light had also begun to blink underneath his shirt. A policeman stopped Drew and asked him what was going on, as it clearly looked as if he had just stolen the light from said construction area. Drew defended himself with the following original statement that has since been quoted 9000x in my family: "It was give to me." They took Drew to the police station and called Mom. Mom says you could hear Drew screaming "It was GIVE to me! IT WAS GIVE TO ME!" in the background for the duration of the call. She picked him up, and that was that. He did not get to keep the light, and he beefs about it to this day.

At Christmas, my grandma got all the male members of the family these cool tools that basically consisted of a strong magnet attached to a telescoping metal rod. My uncle promptly used his to rip my sister's big hoop earring out of her ear.

xmas, c. 1996: Buy a green lava lamp as an xmas gift for my sister, who independently buys me a blue lava lamp. (Only our amused cousin knows about this in advance, and relishes our simultaneous amazement when both gifts are opened.) "I knew you liked 'em but would never buy one for yourself!" is the mutual reasoning. We're both fairly happy...but I actually prefer the green one; and she, the blue. So we trade and ultimately keep the one we bought as our own.

My parents recently ordered Chinese food from a new place. When my dad went to pick it up the guy was all flustered because they didn't have the order so he whipped up a new one and gave my dad a quart of free soup with the order. A couple weeks later they ordered again and basically the same thing happened but this time the guy gave him two appetizers for free because he felt so bad. My dad takes the food home and a while later a woman calls and asks when my parents are going to pick up their food order. My mom says, "We already did - we're eating it!" and almost immediately realizes what had happened. They had ordered from one place thinking it was another and turned up at the wrong restaurant so the one place was giving them free food for no reason while the other was sitting there with orders that nobody was picking up!

Dad made baloney quiche.

very cordy veins = vericose veins

― rox qua rox (roxymuzak), Sunday, December 14, 2008

When I was little, I called them "very close veins" and just thought that made sense because they were so close to the surface.

My brother tells me my family's house kitchen started on fire. So they called the fire department, and then decided to play croquet in their (large) backyard while they waited, watching their house burn the whole time.

My brother just called me from a phone that's part of a display at an art exhibition at the national gallery or somewhere. he 'wanted to see if it worked'.

course it now strikes me that i have the number of a phone that's in an art exhibition, should i abuse this y/n

fuck yes - although a quick thinking artist may claim that it's part of the sculpture, intentionally "interactive"

question: can you do a good Brian Sewell impersonation?

"Hello, this is Brian Sewell. Stop looking at this rubbish art!"

yyyyy

i don't see what the author of black beauty has to do with it.

im sure the fact that it works is proof that it is intentionally interactive tbh

Did you do this yet, darragh?

ha i forgot about it.

i dunno what i'd say, but am happy to post the number with internatinoal dialling code. we could rly start something there

My cousin was apparently once asked out in the street by Kevin Bacon.

When I was little I stayed with my elderly great-aunt for a few days. She was afraid I'd be bored while staying with her, so she gave me her HUGE binder of Marmaduke clippings to read. Marmaduke! I literally had to force myself to laugh.

From my sister's old Diaryland diary, a post involving ME:

"Tonight the subject of midgets came up (inevitable, right?), and I was reminded of a very traumatic time in my little brother's life. You see, about eight years ago, my mother and father were shopping around for a new camper for our summer vacations. My dad was constantly searching through newspaper ads, and following up on the ones that sounded promising. Well, one day that summer we all took a ride to Wixom, Michigan to check out a used trailer. We pulled up to the owner's house...and who should come out to greet us? A midget husband and wife! We were all quite taken aback, and watched in silence as my dad got out to meet the happy couple and take a look at their trailer. The first words out of my mother's mouth were, "We can't take this trailer, everything is probably scaled down! Everything is going to be miniature!" I guess that made her even more curious, so she got out of our van and joined my dad. This was when I noticed the horrific look on my little brother's face. It was then that I knew that I was witnessing a very special moment in his young life; his first midget. I wish I would've had my camera. I mean, he was only five...he probably didn't even know that such people existed. I should have handled the situation better. If I were a decent older sister I would have explained that "little people" (as they like to be called) are the same as everyone else. They eat, sleep, have jobs, and live normal lives like the rest of us. Instead, I made up a song. I don't quite remember the words, I just remember that it was a slow, ballad type song. The main lyric went a little something like this, "The midgets fly tonight." As I sang this to my brother, I pictured the midget husband flying in a night sky filled with yellow stars and a wondrous, full moon. You see, even though I intended it to be a frightening song, it's kind of beautiful if you think about it."

--

The slur, "midgets", is unfortunate. I feel terrible for laughing at this.

http://i.imgur.com/EswlCIR.gif

Mum: Now blow out the candles and make a wish
Brother: I wish for... more cream!