Christmas is a time for family...

Yes, it's that time of year again folks, Christmas time... Time for drunken work parties, over-spending, over-eating, and enjoying the company of friends and family.

In my family this translates into drinking LARGE amounts of alcohol, and the dramatic re-telling of the infamous family stories... You know the ones I'm referring to, the ones that have become legendary over the years. The ones that never cease to entertain. The ones that you have little doubt will end up associated with the Greek myths because the stories are that incredible.

The funny thing about these stories is that they are all referred to by their most climactic moment... this pretty much gives away any sense of suspense during the layour of the plot, because when someone said, "OH! Tell the story where EVENT X happened!" Event X is always something very straightforward like, "The time Uncle Jim stabbed Grandpa!" (Yes, that is one of the infamous, TRUE stories in my family... Uncle Jim really did stab Grandpa... though it was hardly as dramatic as you might think.)

The headlines from the other infamous, TRUE stories in my family include:

• The time Aunt Kathy bitch-slapped Tiffany at the family reunion.
• The poop IN Pam's Easter shoes story
• The time Bill threw an ice ball, and gave Uncle Ron a black eye.
• The story of how my parents met in a bar.
• The story of my parents' wedding night.
• The tale of my brother's nickname.
• The story of how I was almost named ROBERTA! (ICK!)
• The time Aunt Toni nearly gassed us all in the car on Christmas eve.
• The "mom's first meatloaf" story
• The swedish meatball story.
• The "Corel actually CAN break" story.
• The tales from our childhood in the basement.
  

As you can see, with most of these stories, it's pretty evident just from the title what you're building up to. And in all honesty, that's probably a good thing... Because nine times out of ten, the listeners are all drunk, the teller is likely three sheets to the wind too, everyone ends up laughing to the point of tears and stomach cramps, and if you hadn't heard the story before, you're likely to lose more than a few of the significant details in the gales of laughter.

It happens.

I mean don't get me wrong, I LOVE listening to these stories. I consider myself a pretty funny/witty individual most of the time... But I am only like that because I was a product of my childhood environment. My family is a large, diverse, strange, hilarious conglomeration of some of the strangest individuals you can possibly imagine... We seriously range everything from a couple of "Type A" Japanese members, to a blind albino lesbian. Seriously we run the whole gamut, and we have EVERYTHING in between the two extremes.

It's kind of funny to think that this is where I come from, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

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QOTD

"The librarian pirate said, 'ARRRRRRRRG! READ A BOOK!'" ~Anthony.

Bridget: "We need to hang out more!"
Liz: "Yeah we do!"
Bridget: "We need to go to the straight bars!"
Liz: "Yeah, that's where there are straight men!"
Bridget: "Yep. I scare off straight men."
Liz: "Me too... Let's go out soon and see if we can set the record for scaring them off!"