This family is too well adjusted!
Warning: The following piece is tongue in cheek. So don't go nuts on me. Okay?
Sometimes I wish I were an addict or an alcoholic, maybe a survivor of abuse. How about an anorexic?
Why can't I have a funny uncle or a creepy grandpa? How about a grandmother caught slipping rat poison into the neighbor's coffee? If my mother had really cared, she'd have had debilitating bouts of OCD.
I'd settle for a cliche. A sister who forges oxycontin prescriptions. It would be a lovely thing to hear from her--stoned out of her mind--at all hours and at the very worst times.
I imagine a beautiful world wherein a brother is jailed for embezzling the Girl Scout cookie fund, a daddy is locked up for gang activity. An in-law is running a stable of underaged prostitutes.
I long for childhood memories that are marked by chaos, gunplay, mind-altering substances, rabid dogs, and dozens of half, step and adopted crazies living under my roof.
But, alas, I have none of this. I'm just unlucky that way.
I blame this bad fortune on my mother and father, who didn't drink, didn't fight, didn't take drugs, and didn't so much as run a stop sign. In other words, our family life was boring.
Wasn't it Tolstoy who said, "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way?" Well, what does that tell you about the dull happy family from which I sprang?
I'll tell you what is says. It says that no one wants to hear about it, a bunch of joy and cheerfulness.
How am I supposed to be a writer or a storyteller or a plain ole interesting person when I've been saddled, through no fault of my own, with nothing but pleasant memories? Sadly, it's my destiny and the burden I must bear.
Dad, if you'd been more like Pat Conroy's "Great Santini" and less like Father Knows Best, I'd be able to crank out tales of depravity faster than a tweaker on an 89-hour bender. Mom, if you'd been more like Joan Crawford's "Mommie Dearest," my writing life would have unfolded early and spectacularly.
But you were always there, encouraging me, supporting me. Damn my bad luck.
