My family is very, well, different. i spent much of my childhood being ashamed of the uniqueness of it (you are SO right, cactus, uniquity would be way more fitting here).
Yes, there are religious differences – i mean, we are all over the place here…orthodox jews, pentecostal christians, angostics, and atheists…and while yes, having a religiously diverse family left me feeling, well, somewhat apathetic about religion as a whole (i mean, how do you know WHAT to believe when everyone around you believes something different?) (but this is story and discussion for another day)(can of worms i am not ready to open up here)
but the religion thing…that’s not even what i considered weird. I always thought it made me weird that my Eastern-European half-english, half-yiddish, half-german (wait..that’s not right…) speaking, holocaust-surviving grandparents lived with my mother. I always thought it made me weird that i had FOUR parents. I always thought it made me weird that i drank coffee when i was 12. I always thought it made me weird that my mother said “rubbish” instead of “garbage” and that she said she was going to the “beauty shop” instead of “the hairdresser” and that she threw random yiddish words in her sentences in front of my friends – words like “fumph” which, to her, means wander around and manage to waste time doing nothing.
(we did a lot of “fumphing” as kids. my mom would say, “why don’t we go fumph around the mall for a bit?” it was ALWAYS the mall…)
I always thought it made me weird that my sister and i cooked dinner for ourselves when we were way too young to be THAT near a stove. I always thought it made me weird that i got a car on my 16th birthday. I always thought it made me weird that i celebrated both Hanukkah and Christmas. I always thought it made me weird that my uncle speaks with such a strong East Tennessee accent that even i have to ask him to repeat himself at least 4 times. I always thought it made me weird that my dad is a gynecologist (although it did make me quite popular with the guys in high school)
and I always thought it made me weird that i had THOSE relatives in Virginia. The aunt and uncle who lived in the mountains. The aunt and uncle who would invite us to come for Christmas. She’d bake her own bread (because it was easier than finding a store that sells it)Â They didn’t use their heating in the winter and instead piled homemade quilt upon homemade quilt on our freezing bodies. They made a Christmas tree of only Elvis decorations.
They deep-fried their holiday turkey. They have to travel to West Virginia (read: into another state) to find a movie theater to go and see the Fred Savage movie, The Wizard, where they poured the pop out of 2 liter bottles and the popcorn came out of a microwave.
and now that i’m all grown up, i realize that those things that i was so embarrassed of, those things i didn’t want people to know, those things that i thought made me WEIRD…
MAKE FOR ENDLESS AMOUNTS OF HILARIOUS BLOG FODDER.
🙂
who knew?
ps. as an added bonus, i now get to pass down all MY weirdness to my kids.
one day they’ll stop being mortified by my hideous dancing SKILLZ and thank me on their blogs…
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