grown-ups: family

When I was a kid I hated to go to bed. I was the youngest, and I was convinced that my family would wait for me to go to bed and then they would have a party without me.

I have an older brother, and when we were younger my dad would always say to us when we would misbehave, "Your older brother and sister used to do that....and you don't see them here anymore, do you?"
For years we believed that we had an older brother and sister that misbehaved, and my parents got rid of them. Needless to say, we were little angels!!

Cousin Jay would say he could pick us kids up by our ears. When I was 5, I finally caught on to the trick. He'd slip his arms under our armpits and then grab our ears and lift.  

My Uncle Joe used to tell me he'd squash me like a bug....and then ask me to come hug him. I really believed he'd squash me.  

WHen I was little maybe 7-9 years old, I was really shelter from the harshness of life by my momther. My mom's husband my stepdad was rarely being seen for some time and to me it was no big deal.

One day he was home with us and my mom non-chalant asked for something I thought was very special from him. Never in my wildest naivete was this request something that would effect our lives.

"Jay...I want a divorce."

I thought, "Oh mom wants another present or something for herself nice." I didn't know a divorce meant the worst for a marriage. I will never forget hearing that statement comng from her again.

I used to believe…

That all adults were aliens and when I was in bed they reverted to real form tall thin shrouded creatures and if you looked into their cowls all you see was darkness

I dreamt that my brother and my mother abandoned me in a bakery..after that I hated to go to the bakers..until I found out that they would never do anything like that

i used to believe that there was a difference between a 'lady' and a 'woman'. the difference being that ladies wore make-up and women didn't!! my mother never wore make-up and my best friends mom did sometimes so my friends mom was a lady and my mom was a woman :)

I used to believe that everyone only had Uncle Bills and Aunt Sues. My mother had a brother named Bill and a sister named Sue - and Sue happened to marry a man named Bill. My father had a sister named Sue as well. So I had two uncle Bills and two aunt Sues. When a friend told me he had an Uncle Pete (or some such non-Bill name,) I didn't believe him, because ALL uncles are "Uncle Bill."

I have only one cousin, who happens to be male. I thought, like dads, uncles, or brothers, cousins could only be male. I was probably 10 before I realized the truth!

I used to believe that when I went to sleep at night, my parents hid in the hallway plotting to kill me. I trusted my stuffed cat to protect me and knew he had done his job every night when he was on the floor in the morning and had been in my arms at bedtime.

Well, sometimes my mom would act a bit cranky every month for some reason, and it was usually my dad who was so cranky (this doesn't mean that he's bad father, please don't take it this way!) so I believed that sometimes my father and mother would trade bodies. So that my mother was actually my father, and that my father was actually my mother.

My parents had this heart-shaped plastic picture frame. They never put their own picture in it, so it still had the picture of a little girl that came in it. They thought it was funny to tell me that little girl was their first daughter, Debbie, who they got rid of because she was bad.
Needless to say, I was very well-behaved.

My little sister is 21 years younger than me. She believes that kids are not human. They are all *childrens*. They will be human when they grow up.

Actually, my cousin:
I'm only 8 years younger than his mother so he calls me Aunt Stephanie. When his mother tried to explain that I was actually his cousin, he explained, very matter-of-factly, that that was just not possible, because I am old like her!

When my mom needed to stop at a store, my dad would just let her go in and we would all wait in the car. My dad hated the fact that we were always really loud, so he told us that all the people walking around were actually bears in people costumes, and if we weren't totally quiet, the bears would come eat us. Of course while we are in the back covering our mouths, being dead silent...my dad was sleeping.