My Dysfunctional Family by Beth Stafford, And the people of BookRix! (summer beach reads txt) 📕

“Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.” ― George Burns

 “Nothing like watching your relatives fight, I always say.” ― Rick Riordan

“Home is where you are loved the most and act the worst.” ― Marjorie Pay Hinckley

“A dysfunctional family is any family with more than one person in it.”  ― Mary Karr

“Siblings: children of the same parents, each of whom is perfectly normal until they get together.” ― Sam Levenson

“All families are psychotic. Everybody has basically the same family―it's just reconfigured slightly different from one to the next.” ― Douglas Coupland

When I was 9 or 10, mom took us to my uncle and aunt's farm while they went somewhere. My aunt was my mom's identical twin. Well, my older brother and my two cousins and me were playing in the barn when we noticed a two by six plank propped up in the barn loft. 'What a wonderful sliding board that would make,' we thought. The only trouble, it wasn't slick enough. We were not to be deterred, so we slicked it up with... Wait for it... Cow patties. If you are not familiar with the term it is number two from a cow's point of view, that is if cows had to get permission to go to the bathroom.

It worked like a charm, that is until my aunt Cathy caught us. She wouldn't let us come in the house, so she made us strip completely naked right there in the back yard. Then she brought out a tub of cold water for us. She saved the hot water for washing our clothes, which she started even before she started on us. We just stood there naked until she was ready to start scrubbing us down one at a time.

At least after we were clean she let us have a towel. We waited wrapped up in towels until our clothes were dry. I guess that was part of our punishment for making such a mess for her to clean up. By the way, Aunt Cathy had a washing machine, but no dryer. She hung the clothes on the line to dry. Hoping mom and dad wouldn't find out what we did was no use. Because none of us were allowed to come back into the house until our clothes were dry, which meant mom and dad were back before we could come in.

Thank goodness our parents thought our punishment was sufficient. In fact I think they all got a big laugh at our expense.

I grew up in New York in the '50s, '60s and '70s. No one had central air-conditioning like they do where I live now (Florida), and the summers could get ridiculously hot. During one heat wave, when the temperature stayed in the low 90s long into the night, my father, brother and I were sitting out on the sun-porch watching television. The floor out there was cool, painted cement sculpted to look like tiles (very popular back then), and my parents had indoor-outdoor furniture that was cooler to sit on than the brocade stuff in the living room.

Anyway, as we're watching - a ballgame, I believe - my Mom came out of the kitchen and stood at the door of the sun-porch. "I have an announcement," she said.

"Yes?" This was my dad, who had reluctantly torn his gaze from the screen.

"I broke a glass in the kitchen sink."

"Okay," he said. "Why are you telling us about it?"

She gave him a look of mild disdain and said, "Really Raymond! It's simple - I'm just warning you: don't go barefoot in the sink." She left.

We almost died trying not to laugh out loud and insult her, and I think my liver imploded.

Ah, that was Mom.

Ah well my family is... Special, to say the least. My brother (biological) is bipolar and my mother (foster) was recently diagnosed as schizophrenic. That being said my father (foster) and myself are left with a majority of the household responsibilities. I've lived with them about a year now and from day one it was obvious that things were going to be a bit more hassling than my real home even though me and my brother grew up in a household with a drug dealer and absent mother.

The last day when we were still with our biological father my brother (being fifteen at the time) decided he was sick of us living with such a... Troubling situation. He woke me up in the middle of the night (I was twelve), and told me he was going to take us to a "better place". At first I remember being confused and asking where he was taking us until he pulled out a knife and tried to cut my wrist with it (succeeding,but barely). I ran outside with him chasing me (he himself bleeding where he cut himself) pleading me to just calm down. I ran to my neighbors and she opened the door and I called 911 explained what happened, and we were both taken to the hospital where we were evaluated and he was placed in a mental ward for almost six months afterwards where he then came to live with us after he got better. We both still have scars from that night, but I'm glad we found a loving home where he can get the help he needs.

Then at my foster family I remember we went to get a dog, and I was really happy because I had always wanted a small lap dog to take care of, but my real father said we didn't have the time or money for a dog. I got online and started researching until I finally found the perfect puppy for sale not to far away. We all discussed it and we contacted the owners. That weekend we went to go pick up our new puppy, but a snow storm prevented us from going the rest of the way once we were half way there. I called them and explained the situation, and later that night we finally arrived. However once we arrived my mother became because she saw a much fluffier dog (a female of the same litter) and started cooing at it. However me and my brother wanted the runt I had found online. After a dispute we ended up getting both puppies and named the runt Stormy (due to the storm and the fact he had white dotted onto his black and brown fur randomly almost like snow had fallen on him) and the female Nibbles (I don't know my mother named her). We were all chatting on the way home, almost a three hour drive. My brother and I were arguing over which one of us got to hold our puppy while my mother held hers. That's probably my favorite memory from the period of me living here,but what I found the most humorous about everything is the fact that not an hour after we got home my mother commented how she didn't like dogs and wanted a kitten instead, and my fathers blank reaction looking from her to Nibbles. (We ended up giving Nibbles to her niece and getting her a small grey kitten within a month).

Publication Date: 07-22-2013

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