When I was growing up, friends found the following things about my family peculiar:
1. We ate dinner together every night, at exactly 6:00 p.m.
2. At dinner, we frequently discussed world affairs, history and argued about earthworm's instinctual habits. (Right now the popular dinner-time discussion/argument revolves around the domestication of cattle as it relates to the grammatical pluralization of moose. I couldn't even make this stuff up.)
3. We only own one TV.
4. My mom liked to talk openly about, well, everything. I first learned what the word "orgy" meant when I was 13, at a dinnertime discussion. And of course, on that particular evening, I had a friend over for dinner.
5. Andrew and I were actually friends growing up, and hung out together of our own violation. When I was in junior high school and he was in high school, he'd drive me everywhere, only sometimes complaining. But if he borrowed Dad's truck for the day, he'd often show up after school unannounced to pick me up, by his own choice. After he moved to Edmonton, he'd still sometimes surprise me at school when he came home for the weekend to visit.
6. We were rarely allowed to have sleepovers, or to go on sleepovers.
7. On one family vacation, we managed to visit four historic forts. And that's not including the five or so museums we went to on that same trip.
I really love these photos. Not the kind of thing you see in Paris.
ReplyDeleteGrowing up we only had one TV at a time... the one time I climbed up onto the old one and then it and I preceeded to fall and the TV landed on top of me. I cried.
ReplyDeleteI think that sounds like a cool family. Except for the sleepover thing, but as I learned, in Cold Lake sleepover almost always involves getting drunk when older than 12 or so. Kinda sad actually.
ReplyDeleteYou should be happy about your brother, too (as I think you are), since he didn't kick you in the face for fun or passive-aggressively treat you like an idiot, like my older sister.
What's with the expired kitchen?
ReplyDeletei have to say, that sleepover thing sucked my balls when i was little...
ReplyDeletealso, the first time i went for dinner at jessica's house her mom was playing some tori amos. i was 11, and scared.
and also...'the ball is in your court' is still one of my top 10 funniest moments ever, but i was never sure WHY it was so funny exactly...
I still only have one TV and it has been with me for nearly 20 years. I used to have my old school Nintendo hooked up to it as a kid -- that's how old it is.
ReplyDeleteMy grandpa was the kind of guy who would put the new TV on top of the old broken TV and leave it there for a year or so. Why go buy a TV stand when you've already got the old TV upon which to place the new TV?!?
While reading this entry, I was certain that there was going to be a numbered entry about how your friends found your outdoor graveyard kitchen to be "peculiar".
I was raised by some hard-core evangelical parents. Love them to death, of course, but some of that shit was nuttier than a porta-potty at the peanut festival.