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Skeletons in the closet

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Misanthropic, Oct 20, 2010.

  1. Misanthropic

    Misanthropic
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    During a recent visit with my dear, sweet, 94-year-old grandmother, she began to reminisce about her younger days, as old folks are wont to do. We talked about my great Aunts and Uncles, and the house she used to live in.

    Then she told me that, while her folks were home making illicit booze during prohibition, she worked. My sweet little gramma, it turns out, ran numbers for her uncle, the bookie.


    Focus: What better time than Halloween to open the doors for those dark family secrets. What skeletons do you have swinging from the family tree?
     
  2. DrFrylock

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    Having a few bootleggers in the family isn't that much of a skeleton, but I guess it differs from person to person.

    My paternal lineage is nobility-in-exile of an Eastern European country. The country doesn't recognize royalty any more, but the family crest is on some old state buildings and we have a Wikipedia page. An old-country relative compiled a family history about 20 years ago and self-published it in a book, of which I have a copy. It traces my paternal line back to the 1200s or so, which is pretty cool I guess. A few separate branches of the family eventually emigrated to America and melted in with the melting pot. Interestingly, all these branches of the family are descended from an especially horny 17th century Count. My branch is the only one of these that has the special distinction of not having any parts of the family tree that joined back together...

    So, uh, yay us!
     
  3. Angel_1756

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    I've only been told a few scant details about my mom's arrival in Canada... I originally thought her family left China because of the communist regime, and that it was all on the level. Turns out they actually fled in the middle of the night because Gramps made some shady business deals and anticipated that some underworld gangsters were going to come and kill his family that night. He just went home from work one day, told his entire family to pack, and 30-hours later they were in Vancouver.
     
  4. audreymonroe

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    The most powerful cervix... in the world...

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    Two years ago, I was sitting in my room when I get an IM from a name I didn't recognize. I open it, and it's my cousin from my mom's side who I hadn't seen in about ten years and hadn't heard from ever since she found me on MySpace and we exchanged a few messages. I guess it was the only way she could find to get in touch with me, and she needed to share some bad news with me.

    My Aunt had died.

    Months ago.

    In jail.

    Why was she in jail?

    Because she was a prostitute and a crack addict.

    I had had absolutely no idea, having been way too young while we were still in touch with that side of the family to be told any of this. But all of a sudden, I realized that I had visited her in rehab and understood why my dad had been so angry to discover why my aunt was going to be watching me for a weekend instead of my uncle and cousin (because my cousin had stolen my uncle's car and fled across the country with her boyfriend and he had to go track her down and bring her back).

    That whole side of the family is fucked up, and I'm sure I don't even know the half of it. I've found out that the same cousin was arrested for stealing this, like, million dollar signed baseball from a museum, and that my uncle actually has a ton of kids all by different women. It always kind of weirds me up/upsets me that that's where I came from too, and I wonder what attributed I have from them that just haven't come out yet. My dad's side of the family is pretty tame, and by tame I mean boring. Although I really don't know anything about them either. For a while, I kept hearing about my cousin, Gabe, in whispers like he was the black sheep. No one had seen or heard of him in years because he had dropped out of college and moved to Vegas with a girl no one liked. But when I met him, it turned out he was SUPER nerdy and it was really disappointing.

    Although, my great-grandparents apparently never spoke a word of "the old country" (Russia and Germany) once they got to the States. I'm assuming it's because they were Jewish and life was bad there and that's why they left, end of story. But I like to get carried away and imagine them fleeing the country because they were caught up in the revolution and had to flee for their lives because they pissed off the wrong people. Or something.
     
  5. lostalldoubt86

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    The most scandalous thing I can think of is about my paternal grandmother. Apparently, while she was married to my grandfather, she was also sleeping with her sister's husband. Between the two of them, she had 10 children. All three of them are dead now, and there is no record of whose father is whose. The only reason anyone knows is because my grandmother confessed it on her death bed. I don't actually know my great aunt (she moved somewhere down south after she retired, and most of her kids followed her), but apparently I look a lot like her former husband.
     
  6. KillaKam

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    For years, I was oblivious that one of my uncle's was actually having an affair with another one of my uncle's wife. They divorced a while back. I never noticed that those two guys had this between them, and never exchanged words at any family gatherings. My mom waited until my sister and I were older to tell us, damn I never saw that one coming.
     
  7. MoreCowbell

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    The details are somewhat hazy, but from my understanding, a generations-ago relative of mine may have killed another man with a shovel in a Saskatchewan farm field because he was sleeping with that dude's wife.
     
  8. Maltob14

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    A good deal of my living family members who are older have killed people, and don't even get me started on the ones who are dead. No they aren't in the armed forces but have killed mostly due to a civil war. Worse yet, there are a few cases of hits being called on family members by other family members, one of them about 20 or so years back right here in Canada. Needless to say, family reunions are the shit.
     
  9. Juice

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    My great uncle was court marshalled and went to jail for 5 years for torturing a Nazi POW.

    My great grandfather and 2 of my great-great uncles (his brothers) beat a man to death who was painting their house because he sexually assault their younger sister.
     
  10. TwoTooFar

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    My late grandfather had a skeleton come out of the closet during the last few years of his life, and not by his own choosing.

    He was the absolute mid-western man that fought in WWII, came home, got married, and had four kids. He worked as a salesman for a large cereal company for thirty-five years and raised the flag in his front yard every single morning. He went to church every Sunday, never swore, and was sure to take his grandkids fishing on a consistent basis. Grandpa was the perfect example of our greatest generation. Then, a private investigator knocked on is door and told him he had another kid.

    Evidently, my grandpa was married before my grandma, and the woman ran off one day. Nobody knew she was pregnant. Fifty years later, she died and her daughter found some strange pictures in a chest somewhere. She hired a private investigator and tracked down her father, my grandpa.

    The entire event was a shock to the family because nobody, not even my grandma, knew grandpa was previously married. Possibly my favorite conversation I ever had with the man was about this subject:

    TTF: "Grandpa, what's going on here?" (Kind of laughed saying that)
    Gpa: "Well... shit."
     
  11. Tyty

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    I had an aunt.

    After my dad and uncle were born my grandparents wanted to have a daughter. So they tried one more time, and to their luck they had a little girl. She lived for 8 years. I only know this because when I was younger I saw a picture of my dad and uncle with a young girl, and asked who she was. The only thing I have ever been told is that she died when she was young, no why, no details whatsoever.

    I've never tried to ask again, apparently it just is not talked about.
     
  12. Kubla Kahn

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    Ive never met my grandmother on my mom side because she was physically abusive toward my mom and her sisters while growing up. I heard a story recently that my grand dad was thinking about leaving her and there was a huge fight where he left for a while. He came back for the sake of the kids and while showering the same day my grandmother came in and pushed him over, he slipped throwing his back out for weeks. One of many psychological games I have heard she played. I also have an uncle on that side of the family that Ive never met because he was close with my grandmother.

    I have an aunt in my extended family, 2nd or 3rd cousin whatever, that disappeared for a while and resurfaced with a gender reassignment surgery. The only occasion that I remember meeting her, before she became a he, was at my brothers high school graduation party when she brought her daughter who was my brothers age. Her daughter was smoking hot, being as we had never met either of them before we were disappointed to learn we were in fact related to this amazingly hot blonde standing in our kitchen (no there was no cousin fucking you sick fucks). I have yet to meet my newly minted uncle.


    There are a few other darker secrets from that side of my family but I wouldn't feel right airing them with strangers when the relatives involved could, in even a slim outside chance, read them.
     
  13. Solaris

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    I believe my Great-Uncle was killed in active service for the IRA. He was driving a bomb to a British army barracks and it exploded early killing him and no-one else. Would love to learn more about it but as he's from the mainly protestant side of the family, it's a touchy subject.
     
  14. scootah

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    My surname is a pretty uncommon one. But it's not far off the spelling of a much more common name. I found out when I was 15, that my great, great grandfather was a moderately famous drunk -and a the birth of all four of his sons, he'd signed the family name differently on the birth certificate. There's a huge argument with my extended family about how the name should be spelled.

    On the other side of the family, most of my relatives are in a not-quite-cult. It's not actually considered a quote - but it's pretty fucking close. It's an offshoot of the Lutheran church - the Lutherans don't like them at all though. Big focus on go forth and procreate. One of my cousins tells me about her dreams of murdering the entire family and lives in an area famous for serial killers. She doesn't know where I live.
     
  15. WickedBitch

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    My husband's brother is in prison right now for having some sort of sexual encounter with a 13 year old girl on his school bus route. We don't know the details (and I can totally dig that). Husband's brother's oldest son (21 now) is also in prison (they were sentenced within 2 days of each other) for molesting brother's youngest son (12 now) who is now in foster care because his mother is in a nursing home (MS) and his hideous older sister can't hold a job or keep illegal-immigrant Mexican cock out of her mouth. Seriously. Her last boyfriend was deported.

    Be warned. Hideousness under here:
     

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  16. skydive1973cdr

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    My fantastic grandfather, God rest his soul, was a green thumb. So green, in fact, that he grew weed and sold it in the sixties.

    In his defense, he had 17 children to feed.

    Or maybe that's why they had 17 children.

    I forget.
     
  17. Evildreams

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    Do you know how they say that in chaos there's opportunity? Well my great grandfather was a firm believer of that philosophy, so in the second world world war while Malta was being blitzed by the axis from all sides and provisions were scarce, he made a small fortune by buying food on the black market and selling it in his grocery store, illegally. With the money he made, he bought each of his children a house. He had seven children. Yeah, a member of my family sold food illegally, when it comes to breaking the law, that's about it.