...a way of seeing beyond inner and outer.

Friday, September 10, 2010

Family

My middle child has a project due next week. It's actually a family project. Which means the parents do all the work, and then the child writes something ineligibly on the poster board and gets an "A".

I digress.

We are supposed to make a family tree. And we are supposed to "Be Creative". Do we really need to be creative?
I mean, I firmly believe my family is insane. The whole fantabulous family - parents, grandparents, in-laws, out-laws.



I know that I am not the only one. Well, I hope I am not the only one. I don't think I am. It's like Julia Sugarbaker said "We don't hide our crazy people in the attic...it's the South, we sit 'em out on the front porch for everyone to see."

I have learned to embraced it. I think it's best that way. Just to join in the chaotic hilarity that will inevitably ensue.



So what information do we need to add to this family tree?
That one of the grandparents is a conspiracy theorist? That one of the grandparents makes up new names for the grandchildren?
Perhaps we could add the little factoid that one uncle is obsessed with Star Wars...and Scotland? Or maybe mention an aunt's addiction to any store with the word "Dollar" in the name?
How about a little blurb about one of the parent's habits of pouring a half a cup of tea leaves in the horn of a bull and making a very strong tea with it?

Hmmm? What's that? Ohhhh! You just wanted the names....no family info. Ah, I see. Nothing that might get any of us committed. Right. Right. I see what you mean. You want the child to feel special and unique but not, um, weird.



Alrighty. Let's just start over.

6 comments:

  1. It's bad when you need to follow your own blog so you know when it's been updated.. I love these babies.. Sit those children in the front room where they belong!

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  2. oh, and it was good of you not to mention the dog hair or ikea triggered panic attacks..

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  3. well, if i mentioned *every* weird thing this family does, the post would be muuuch longer.
    plus, you probably have the power to "creatively" edit!

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  4. you mean like how one of us is more interested in dead relatives than people he knows... wonder who that could be

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  5. But we love that one. The dead relative one. Or is that a different one who loves dead relatives? There could be one on the other side of the tree that I haven't met yet. Since I haven't met Tennal Ka. Or maybe I haven't met his/her other personality. The real one.

    We had that project in grade 5. I had to go to the teacher and explain that I had no family tree. I have a thicket with lots of lopped branches littering the forest floor. And, actually, there has been a fair bit of lopping and re-grafting on both sides.

    And this family tree poster would be a sanitized, pruned, fictionalized version of the real one. And not to ask my girl too many questions about it because her grasp was a bit tenuous and we don't want to give her an identity crisis, now do we?

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  6. We love'em all. Even when we don't like'em all the time. It's part of our charm. As to the crisis of family.. it's already hard enough to be in 5th grade, why make it any harder. I'm thinking nice topiary in a very pretty cone shape, maybe a unicorn, since we're editing anyway. and Tennal is David, you know, the star wars nuts..

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