Help! My Family Is Weird!

As we enter the holiday season, we are once again faced with the unavoidable reality that our families are weird. And not just weird; they put the "fun" in "dysfunctional."

It was Leo Tolstoy who said, "All happy families resemble one another; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." All due respect to Mr. Tolstoy, but we might change that quote a little bit: "All normal families resemble one another; every weird family is weird in its own way." Or we might just go with this anonymous quotation: "Families are like fudge: mostly sweet with a few nuts."

The truth is, every family is weird. Weird is the new normal. An unscientific poll just of the SparkLife virtual office turned up these semi-disturbing quirks:

We have a father who, every time we used to fly or go to a concert or event, would pretend he forgot the tickets and ask who brought them.

We have a non-religious family who made us recite poetry instead of prayers before dinner. Their favorite was "Invictus"— disturbingly, also the last words chosen by Timothy McVeigh.

We have a sister with freakishly large thumbs.

We have an uncle with nine and a half fingers (he lost half of one in a meat grinder).

We have a father from West Virginia.

We have a grandmother who lives in sin with her 90-year-old boy toy.

We have an uncle who claims to have floated down a river in an upturned Porta-Potty.

We have a brother who lives in a yurt.

We have an aunt who likes to wear her full-length mink coat inside.

We have a sister who has our exact same voice. Even our parents can't tell us apart.

We have a grandfather who was in the mob but was not Italian.

We have a father who introduced himself to a boyfriend by screaming while streaking from the woods to the ocean in his tighty whities.

We have a cousin who was Miss Runner-up North Carolina. Twenty years later, she still swears she lost because there was a sequin missing on her evening wear.

We have parents who refused to own a television, forcing us to fake our way through conversations about 90210. ("Oh that Brenda! What a card!")

We have a father who's obsessed with vanity license plates.

We have a cousin who fakes a British accent.

We have a mother who made us shop for underwear out of a wagon wheel (don't ask).

We have an outlaw inlaw who's in jail for murder.

We have a cousin with six dogs, two cats, a bird, three rabbits, and a possum. (Oddly, this is not one of the West Virginia relations.)

We have an uncle who ends every conversation with, "If wishes were fishes, we'd all be fishin."

How does your family redefine "weird?"