Do you have a relative that is the source for all of the stories in your family? Are you that relative?

-- Anonymous, May 12, 1999

Answers

My wife's grandmother was quite similar to yours. She died a few years ago, and cleaning out her house was an adventure.

She had so many mice in her house that she used to hang her food from the shower curtain rod so the mice wouldn't get it.

She had safety deposit boxes all over the place. In one of them was found a twelve pack of condoms.

We all loved her though, and she is missed.

-- Anonymous, May 12, 1999

Both sides of my family are crazy. Southern crazy. One side is William Faulkner: dark and secret and scary and the other side is Tennesse Williams: dark and drunk and funny. My great-grandfather on one side was a bootlegger and my great-grandmother on the other side was an incredible quilter and dress-maker but didn't get much of a chance to sew while she was in the mental hospital for manic-depression.

My own grandmother (maternal) is a family matriarch stereotype who thinks the earth revolves around her. She treats my mother like the maid and treats me like a princess. For some reason, she is not blessed with tact or restraint and once said to a dear friend of mine: "My De-ah, you've gained so much weight, I didn't recognize you." When you're the queen, you can say such things.

-- Anonymous, May 12, 1999

My paternal grandmother, Bama, fell in love with a young priest in her parish when she was 88 years old. Bama wrote a letter to the diocese asking that the father be released from his vows, because she loved him and wanted to marry him. She added futher that she didn't just love him because he was the defender of her faith, she loved him as a man. The diocese became alarmed and contacted my uncle, they assumed my grandmother was a bit dotty and needed to be monitored.

Bama was fine, she just wanted some young priest booty.

Several years later, the same father officiated at her funeral mass, and the service was extremely touching because he had so many great stories about her. For instance, she used to call him to apologize for missing Sunday mass because she was shopping at the mall.

He left out the story of Bama's marriage proposal; go figure.

-- Anonymous, May 12, 1999

OK, when my cousin was around four (she's nine now), she got the movie "101 Dalmations." She adored that movie, and when Cruella DeVil came on she wasn't scared at all. Nope, not one bit. She just grinned and yelled out: "It's GRANDMA!!!!!!!" That should give you an idea of what my grandmother is like...

-- Anonymous, May 12, 1999

My grandmother and grandfather on my Dad's side are a couple of hoarders. I had to show my boyfriend their house before he could even begin to comprehend the size of it. You have to walk kinda sideways through this narrow path in the house to get anywhere because on either side of it there is stuff piled head high and metres wide. Everything is balanced on top of each other, and it becomes a real effort to find the room to sit down. A lot of it is actually priceless stuff . . . but there is also a hell of a lot of crap too. Because they have run out of room in their own house they have dumped a lot of it at both my perants house and at my uncle's as well. My perants happen to have a large (house sized) shed on their property. Now they can't even fit a car into it. I just hope it's not hereditary.

-- Anonymous, May 12, 1999

One of my mother's sisters was once an "employee" at the Chicken Ranch in LaGrange, Texas. To all you non-Texans, the Chicken Ranch is probably better known as "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas". You can't imagine how proud we all are...

-- Anonymous, May 12, 1999

Oh Pamie, I never realized we had so much in common. My maternal grandmother is quite the story source herself. Aside from all of the famous figures from history she tried to convince us grandkids we were related to (including travelers on the Mayflower and the Titanic), her greatest accomplishment is writing a book explaining how the fall of the Iron Curtain was all a ruse and the communists are waiting for America to get weak and lazy. Oh, and the communists also have a weather machine, explaining all natural disasters in the US of A.

My grandpa, then, is understandably a little off. I remember him tasting milk in the grocery store to see if it was fresh; and when buying underwear for my full-sized grandmother he responded to the salesperson's question of "What size?" by proudly exclaiming, "The biggest damn ones you got!"

Of course, I also have an uncle by marriage who was featured on America's Most Wanted a few years ago for marrying women and then leaving with all of their money. Now you know why I don't go home for Christmas.

-- Anonymous, May 13, 1999

I am from Louisiana, so I have a huge family and they're almost all weird. My uncle Sturgeon(yes, after the fish) got married right out of high school to my Aunt Paula. They immediately began threatening divorce. i'm talking horrible awful fights. They finally decided to get one after their youngest son finished high school, a date 16 years in the future. They had the plans worked out and everything. Who got what, the lawyers had the papers fixed for years. Phillip graduated 4 years ago, and they got so used to their fighting they stayed together..still threatening divorce. My grandma doesn't let 3 of her grandsons come into her house without removing their earrings. They do it too..she pulled one out a few years back. She also crept behind my cousin Joshua's chair and snipped his pony tail off. My cousin Marguerite was estranged from her husband Corey. he didn't show up on the court date. She went home to find that he was too busy stealing the frozen fish from her freezer to go to court.(My aunt later broke a plate over his head) sigh..this is why I moved to texas...they have done much worse but I am too embarrassed to say the rest:)

-- Anonymous, May 13, 1999

My father is from very old, traditional New England family- they hide the crazy ones. When he and my mother had been married for a few years, they had to go to his grandmother's funeral. My mother was a bit surprised since she didn't even know his grandmother was still alive- she had been in a mental hospital for years and years...

My father's brother was the one that was the source of all of the stories though (among my immediate family- my father's family didn't discuss him). He doesn't speak and is afraid of people- he lives in a trailer deep, deep, deep in the woods of Maine. Whenever we went to visit my grandfather, we would inevitably see my uncle. He used to come over and hide behind a newspaper the entire time but my mother was convinced that he just needed to be 'brought out of his shell' and would try to have conversations with him. She would speak to him in this enormous, booming voice and he would still be hiding behind the paper, only the paper would start shaking. The poor man was absolutely terrified of my mother but she never seemed to recognize it. She still thinks that he must be grateful for her efforts.

-- Anonymous, May 13, 1999

My grandma didn't work at the brothel, she ran it.

-- Anonymous, May 13, 1999

OK, well, I will not talk a lot about my maternal grandmother unless Pamie specifically asks me to, because a lot of the earlier stuff in the time I've known my grandma surrounds some totally ignorant, stupid, racist, outrageous views she has -- none of which are shared by me. I just laugh at her because I can't believe she really believes it. But then again, she grew up in Louisiana so I shouldn't be shocked.

But in her older age, she's grown pretty senile and pretty much has dementia. It's OK to laugh at the following. I sure as hell do. But do know that NONE of it is an exaggeration, honestly. My Grandma:

1) Thinks the people in the TV can see and hear her, so she talks to them constantly. She first noticed this when "Bill Cosby told me that she loved the dress I had on." In subsequent months, she talked with "Jerry Schienfield" and loved seeing all the people in Times Square at New Years waved at her and yelled Happy New Years to her.

2)Is an avid watcher of the Teletubbies now, because they love her. She loves when they say hello and goodbye to her. She doesn't miss an episode, although she still can't think of the name Teletubbies, she calls them her "Bubble Babies."

3)Now she has been placed in a home. There she thought she met a wonderful man named "Ruben" who was a Rabbi (my grandmother is Jewish). So she is going on and on about him, and talking about how she even went to Synogogue to see him do the service.

Well, turns out that he's a Catholic priest and she went to Mass.

4) Also at the nursing home she has been put in a wheel chair. So to "keep her figure" she does leg kicks in the chair. Like, high kicks. So she tried to convince a lady to do it with her. The lady told her she was paralyzed. My grandmother said, "That's no excuse! Now let's kick!"

5) She told a catatonic woman, "Oh cheer up a little, you!"

6) Has professed her love for her son-in-law, my uncle, in front of my Aunt (her daughter) and my cousins (her grandchildren). She also has told my Aunt that she doesn't "deserve" Lou.

So that's the tip of the iceberg. The racist horrible stuff is pretty disgusting, but I've told it to a few of my African and African-American friends and they died laughing. But I'll let you all use your imaginations on what she might have said.

-- Anonymous, May 13, 1999

My grandma on my dad's side, she's a little whacky. I think probably the strangest thing that she's ever done that directly involved me in any way was the time that she tried to take me away from my parents. I'm not even sure if I was born yet or if my mom was still pregnant with me. My dad and my grandparents don't exactly agree on certain religious issues. And my grandmother wanted me to be brought up in a "good christian home" so she called my mother's parents one day and set up this elaborate plan to kidnap me and hide me from my parents for the rest of my life. My maternal grandma didn't go along with it and called my mom and started freaking out cause she thought my mother had married into some weird family with all kinds of paraniod schizophreniac delusions... which is actually pretty close to the truth. If you're all good, sometime I'll tell you about how Grandma Cartwright was abducted by aliens in her father's cotton field.

--Trey

-- Anonymous, May 17, 1999

he's not really a relative.. but we have this 'friend of the family', he attends all family gatherings, and has lived with many of my actual relatives.... his name is morris... we get all the interesting 'family stories' from morris... morris is a bit of a booze hound.. no, actully he is a full blown alcoholic who has no teeth.. well he has teeth, he's just always losing them... morris's life consists of traveling from province to province getting really drunk, losing his job, and losing his teeth.. he's the guy we tell stories about..he's had some pretty interesting experiences... the best ones always have to do with his teeth... when ever he makes it home for a visit, his teeth usually arrive a week later in the mail.. pretty funny... yep, morris is one hip cat...

-- Anonymous, May 19, 1999