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TiB Family Circus

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Crown Royal, Jan 4, 2013.

  1. Binary

    Binary
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    Please. Clutter.

    This is amazing. I am trying to figure out if RMMB/TiB attracted people with broken families somehow, or if these kind of fucked up situations are WAY more common than I thought.

    Makes me feel like I grew up with the Cleavers despite having divorced parents, eminently weird family on my dad's side, and a bunch of antisocial farmers on my mom's side.
     
  2. lust4life

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    I think that is probably the case. People would be more open to shedding light on skeletons in their family closets here than with coworkers, etc.
     
  3. Trakiel

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    Call me Caitlyn. Got any cake?

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    My family is completely boring compared to all of this.

    My father's parents are Italian immigrants who came over when my dad was four, while on my mother's side the immigration goes back a generation earlier when her grandfather came over from Germany in the aftermath of WWI to avoid possible execution. Her grandmother was apparently abducted when she was little and brought from Alabama up to Minnesota.

    Beyond that everything is pretty nondescript in my family. Both my parents (who are divorced) and all my aunts and uncles live normal lives, the same with all of my cousins. No one's a raging alcoholic or has a serious drug problem, and no one's in jail or a criminal. My mother's cousion whom I've never met is apparently a complete recluse that hasn't been out of her house in 20 years, but aside from that we don't have any serious mental illness in the immediate family either.

    Now, the man my mother married a few years ago has some drama/crazy potential from his family, which he mostly brought upon himself. Hopefully it stays with his family, though, and my mom doesn't get dragged into it.
     
  4. Roxanne

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    Aw man, I'm the sister who gets naked on the internet. I have to have a few more crazy points than that!

    Craziness in the family is a long, long list. I'll just relate my favorite crazy-family story.

    I was told my whole life that my maternal grandmother, an American who married into a Persian family, killed herself because she was bipolar. Cut to my paternal grandmother on her deathbed, confessing that when my maternal grandmother's husband was away on a business trip, the women in the family conspired to kill her, did so, and framed it to look like suicide. All of it was to keep my grandfather's money in Persian hands, which eventually ended up happening after he married another Persian woman, and she disinherited my mother on the day my grandfather died (but didn't tell us he died for a year, and always pretended like he was in the other room when we called).

    So basically, everyone in my family is crazy. I'm the sane one.
     
  5. Roxanne

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    Sorry for the double post, but just to answer the question before it gets asked a million times, yes, my parents are first cousins.
     
  6. downndirty

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    This thread has made my life so much better.

    Focus: The worst example in my family is my deceased aunt. She was a closet lesbian until her 20's, and in rural South Carolina in the 1970's and 1980's with no father (my grandfather died in '69), drugs were her friend. The fucking shit-storms she caused when she was young were incredible, including showing up to rehab with a duffle bag filled with booze. She was incredibly unstable, sopping up drugs and alcohol like she was on a crusade against being able to walk and spell her name. The low point came when I was young, she was caught stealing my grandmother's pain meds a few times, and later simply robbing my grandmother. She passed away in 2004 (I think), due to an overdose of an epic list of prescription meds that she wasn't even supposed to have access to. She was 45.

    To be honest, I felt sorry for her. My father saw the obvious problems that would have ensued from having this woman around his children and coupled with his incredible homophobia, decided to keep us away from her at any opportunity. She was kind-hearted and gentle, but simply dealt with sobriety the way normal people deal with cancer.
     
  7. Bebe

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    Might as well finish shaming myself, since people seem to be enjoying it. I'm going to spoiler the stories so it's not a wall of text.

    My brother:
    My older brother is a career criminal. He genuinely thinks he's on his way to being kingpin of some sort of redneck empire. This is not the case. The truth is that he is either the worst criminal in the world, or the luckiest. Every single time he commits a crime, he gets arrested within 24 hours. Break a car window? Arrested. Scrap stolen metal? Arrested. Bar fight? Arrested. Despite his multiple arrests, he has never spent more than 24 hours in jail. I can't even tell you how many times my dad has called and said, "Your brother is going away for a while this time, so say your goodbyes." Then magically he's out in time for dinner. It's uncanny.

    He also has a fun baby mama situation. He has 4 kids with 3 different women, which is trashy enough, but then there are the circumstances. Those 4 kids were born in 4 years. He had a baby with the first girl, then another with a second girl, then he went back to the first girl and had a third baby, then he found a third girl to have the fourth with. He is currently dating the second girl again. My sister and I expect a pregnancy announcement anyday now. He'll be 27 this month.

    Crazy Aunt 1:
    My grandma's sister is....feisty. She's a hardcore gambling addict, swears in a way that I envy (she's in her early 70's and her favorite thing to call someone is "pussy"), and chain smokes Marlboro Reds. About 10 years ago, she found out that her husband of 40 odd years was cheating on her and set out to put an end to the affair. She waited for her husband to come home and the very moment he opened the door, she punched him full on in the face. His first instinct? To punch her in her face. That led to them having an all out fistfight in the front yard. My dad's sister kept trying to seperate them, but they were determined to take out years of frustration on each other. Finally they gave it up and went back in the house. The next day her husband broke off the affair and they've been pretty happy ever since. I like to think he lives in fear of her.

    Crazy Aunt 2:
    My dad's older sister has always been quick to fight. She fought a girl in a trailer park (yes, she was living there) and was subsequently arrested. She was wearing nothing but a Mickey Mouse nightgown at the time. Later that same year, she got into a fight with her former brother in law's new wife. She knocked on their front door and proceeded to beat the hell out of the girl (to be fair, the girl had pushed my grandma to the ground earlier in the week). The girl managed to make it into the kitchen and tried to stab my aunt with a butcher knife. My aunt took the knife from her and finished kicking her ass. Later that night, she and my uncle were arrested and ended up spending a month in drug rehab because the county jails were too full when they were sentenced.

    Roughly 10 years later, my aunt and grandma were at the grocery store when my aunt caught a glimpse of the girl. She grabbed the cart and took off running after the girl. Halfway there, she heard my grandma screaming, "It's not her! Stop, it's not her!" And it wasn't. My aunt almost smashed into a total stranger with the cart.

    This is the aunt who raised me when my parents lost their shit.

    Crazy Aunt 3:
    Younger sister to crazy aunt 2. In the early 80's she was married to a real piece of shit who used to beat the hell out of her. The guys in my family did everything they could short of actually murdering him, but he kept on beating her. Finally it was decided that my aunt needed to get the hell out of the state and not tell anyone where she was going. One weekend her husband went away and she packed up all her shit and was just about to leave, when she decided that just leaving wasn't enough. Her husband had a prized, stuffed dear head that hung on the wall. It was ancient and had belonged to his dad and she decided to ruin it. She stuck it in the bathtub and using an unknown method, shaved every stitch of fur off the damn thing and stuck it back on the wall.

    Crazy Aunt 4:
    Younger sister to crazy aunts 1 and 2. She used to be a very heavy drinker and once while she and her boyfriend were drunk, they started arguing. She decided to end the argument by stabbing him. She grabbed a fork out of the sink, raised it up over her head and intended to bring it down on his shoulder. Except she was drunk, misjudged, and stabbed her self in the thigh. 25 years later, you can still see the scar on her leg.

    And so now you all know how delightfully white trash/generally crazy my immediate family is. Sometimes I wonder if I escaped the crazy or if it's lurking underneath the surface, waiting for some jackass to bring it out of me.
     
  8. JWags

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    Yeesh, some heavy shit up in this joint. And to a previous point, I think by law of averages, every semi-large group of people (eg families) are going to have some odd or fucked up members and some stories, so its not completely surprising, but wow.

    As for me. My mom's family is interesting. She has a gathering for them every year at our place which she calls "The Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves Party" only cause her side of the family is interesting and sort of white trashy. My paternal grandfather is a raging alcoholic who routinely cheated on my grandmother, physically abused my mom and uncles, and once punched me in the stomach...when I was 5...for looking at him the wrong way. He told my mother that he'd give me so many rights I'd beg for a left. The man is a treasure. He's pretty much estranged from our family, my grandma divorced him probably 15 years ago, and we only speak to him on Christmas when we are all together and it consists of him bawling and screwing up our names. And unfortunately, I have absolutely no pity.

    Same grandmother was sexually abused as a child by various family members, which probably explains why she was complacent with my grandfather's bullshit for so long. The guest list for aforementioned party has been trimmed in recent years as in previous years a cousin of my mother's was caught attempting to steal candlesticks and the year before he brought his pregnant girlfriend who was, no lie, a black "reformed" former crack-addicted prostitute. She clogged two different toilets in our house over the span of 6 hours and was busted 6 months later for solicitation. The rest of my mom's family are good, hard working salt of the earth people, if a bit daft, but nice nonetheless. Its just the outliers are pretty bad, especially compared to our relatively normal suburban upbringing. I have no clue how my mom won the genetic lottery with that bunch.

    My dad's side is a bit more interesting. He is the 3rd youngest of 7. Of the 7 kids, all but one have master's degrees, and are all relatively successful in one way or another. So it seems ideal. Well, the oldest, my dad's only brother, lives in Boston, is a bleeding heart liberal and raging atheist in a family of conservative, ultra Catholics (my grandfather goes to church 3-4 times a week). Its not just his beliefs, its the arrogant and combative attitude he takes to them. He picks fights in every email chain, his family rarely comes to any gatherings for "money" reasons, and the last times he has been around, for weddings, he has gotten into fights and once verbally berated my 83 year old grandfather almost into tears about politics. Its unconscionable. He's not a bad guy, my aunt is very fun and his oldest daughter is a tremendously open minded and fantastic person, but man he is awful sometimes.

    And the best of them all. My aunt, my dad's youngest sister, is in her late 40s, has an MBA, has a pretty high position at an insurance company, makes well into the 6 figures, very professionally successful. For the last 20 some years, she has been dating essentially a married man. He is "estranged" from his wife, yet still mows the lawn, spends holidays there, and a variety of other shiesty maneuvers. He has twin daughters who are around my age. My aunt has never met them, nor do they likely know she exists, yet she cosigned on student loans for them and contributed funds to one of their weddings. He technically lives with her, but works in Chicago under murky circumstances, eschews our family gatherings at all costs leading to my aunt giving excuses like "the weather", "he had a stomachache", and my favorite, "he couldn't find enough time to make the drive" despite living 30 min closer than my sister and I also coming from Chicago. Despite all of this, she finds the need to criticize other family members for things like choice of college major (she is my sister's godmother yet has made her cry telling her that her dance major "is a waste of time and insulting to your intelligence" and ignoring her while sending our other same aged cousin monthly care packages at school), relationship decisions, and even telling my other 23 year old sister that her marriage potential declines the further she gets in her career. My dad found it in his heart to invite her on our ski trip later this spring. Fuck that, she's gonna be a miserable shrew for 4 days, I can't wait.
     
  9. Pink Candy

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    This story was told this past Christmas in front of the boy.

    My great grandfather was a bootlegger in the 20's. He tried to whack out the boss of NJ, shot him six times. Boss man survives and not surprisingly, my great grandfather winds up riddled with bullet holes.

    My great grandmother goes to the boss and begs for him not to murder her son (my grandfather, an infant at the time) and let them live in peace. He takes pity on her and gives her a set of rules she must live by forever - change your last name (we had a very Italian sounding last name, dropped the vowel and now it's just a simple common name), no one in your family can ever be made, you all must walk away from the family, oh, and you must swear your son will never seek vengeance.

    When my grandfather was dying in 1983, he asked my uncle to drive him to a little surburban town in NJ. He said "Okay, stop the car. Come get me at this spot in 30 minutes." My uncle figured out his plan, and luckily, locked the car door and sped off. From what I understand, the gun was thrown into the Passaic River on the way home.

    The hitman's daughter wound up marrying my grandmother's brother. That didn't make holidays awkward at all. I can only imagine my grandfather seething that his sister in law's father was the man that murdered his father. It sounds so very Shakespeare.

    The boy and I had this conversation after:
    "I told you I could identify with a lot of what was on The Sopranos. You sure you still want to marry into this mess?"
    "You're a ginger. We'll just tell everyone you're 100% Irish."
    "The Irish side is no better. My birth grandmother doesn't speak to any of her children. One of which disappeared because he didn't want to pay child support to his eight illegitimate children. Not to mention there were rumors he molested my aunt. My birth mother is so horribly bipolar and borderline that she told me I should've been aborted when I told her I was moving to Atlanta because Seattle was making me depressed and ill."
    "...Your family's fucked up."

    I didn't disagree.

    Best part, I didn't even get into the violent hardcore alcoholic father that was arrested for aggravated assault for trying to strangle me in an alcoholic rage. Nor did I talk about the socially awkward 22 year old brother that's never held a job and spending his college fund money like water. Yeah, there's a reason I live 1,000 miles away.
     
  10. happyfunball

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    Nothing quite so tragic on my end. But both of my parents came from big families, so there's usually some stories to tell. Let's see, my one uncle came into a small-ish inheritance from a distant relative, so his daughter told him she had breast cancer. She didn't, she just wanted a boob job. When my one cousin was in her early thirties, she started having panic attacks so she was prescribed medication for them. What followed was a 10-year descent into massive drug addiction where she lost her job, her kids and her home (which was in her husband's family for generations). She would steal medication from my grandparents and money from everyone. I saw her for the first time at Christmas and I didn't even recognize her. I didn't think it was possible for someone to have gray skin and still be living. So I sat there and listened to her talk about her saggy boobs while trying not to stare at the pock-marks on her face when she never had acne. She's trying to put her life back together but it's an uphill battle.

    On my mom's side, she has a brother that called her mom one time to say that their other brother had died. He didn't but he wanted their mom to send him money to bury him so he could use it either for drugs or because he owed people some money. He has been hospitalized for not paying back "loans" on time. This is the same brother that my mom never told where we lived and he randomly shows up one day. He needed a ride some where and she agreed just to get him away from the house. Well, on the drive to wherever he pulls out a knife and starts talking about killing her. My mom didn't think she'd be coming home that night.

    My one cousin is in jail for murder. Oh, he didn't actually physically kill him, but he did purposely set fire to the house the guy was sleeping in.
    I am friends on facebook with another of my cousins (I know I keep saying that, but I have like 50 of them) and I tried to hide him one time because he pretty much just posts dirty stuff and my kids read my page sometimes. Well, I accidentally deleted him so he friend requested me again. So now I'm stuck with this stuff in my newsfeed because I'm afraid to try to hide him again:
    [​IMG]
    Which is actually pretty funny, but not when I'm in the hallway of the YMCA. I don't read my facebook in public anymore.

    Some random non-criminal stuff: I have an Uncle Punk, Uncle Beaver, Uncle Peanut, Uncle Butch, Aunt Sissy, Aunt Skinny and my mom's nickname was Poopsie. Which she got home-made tattooed on her arm and was embarrassed about later in life and would always wear a bandaid over until she finally paid to get it lasered off.

    My mom's real name is Helen. Her mom's name? Helen. Her mom's sister's name? That's right, Helen. How confusing that must have been growing up.

    I didn't even get into the the aunt and uncle that wife-swapped with another couple, got divorced, then each guy married the woman they wife-swapped with (huh?). It was such a scandal!