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."

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!