I Have a Weird Family

[askandanswer]

13 hours ago, pam said:

My brother and I are the King and Queen of sarcasm in my family.

Which one are you? 

[Sunday21]

6 hours ago, seashmore said:

F. Start singing "This little light of mine"

My dad's side of the family loves music and reading, both stemming from my grandmother's influence. He was a disc jockey (like at weddings and stake youth dances) from about 1985-2010, so he would have to keep up with current trends in music. I was three and singing along to Meatloaf's most popular album. As a result, I'm into all sorts of music. Ask anyone who has ever lived with me, and they will tell you that I'll play disco polka, country, Christian pop, progressive rock, and 80s soundtracks.

The only time we took "family photos" was the day I received my own endowment; it's the only time we've all been together. In the front, it's me, my sister, and our half sister (a term I use only in instances when it needs to be clear we have different mothers, such as now) and the back row has my (first) brother-in-law and my divorced parents. We've all been baptized, but my dad and I are the only ones consistently active over the last ten years. (Both my sisters have been semi active.)

My first sister got married with three hours notice to a guy she had only been dating a couple of months (I'd known him for years, so he wasn't a complete stranger to everyone) in a park by a lady they found on the internet. My other sister was married with three weeks notice (seven years and five days later) a month before she graduated high school. I joke I'll give everyone three years notice.

Please move to my ward!

[Guest]

9 hours ago, clbent04 said:

Mormon Ethics 101. If a stranger on the sidewalk bumps into you and asks if you got a light, what do you do?

A.) Say yes and help him light it up

B.) Lie to him saying you're sorry you don't have one on you

C.) Tell him you actually do have a lighter on you, but you don't want to be the accomplice to aiding someone in breaking the Word of Wisdom regardless of their beliefs

D.) Pretend you don't hear him and walk on

Say,"I do believe I do.  Thank you for noticing.  What do you know about the restored gospel of Jesus Christ?"

[anatess2]

OH MY GOODNESS CARB!  Your kids describe my kids!  It's eerie reading your family stories!  Here, I'll parallel them...

19 hours ago, Carborendum said:

I was driving with my son the other day when he said something rather odd.  We bantered a bit about it.  He escalated the level of weirdness of his responses until I was forced to say, "You are a really weird boy."

He responded,"Well, I'm your son.  So, why are you surprised?"  I couldn't really argue with that.

My 2 sons were arguing about some space thing in the car -  I can't remember what it was about but it was something that's all wildly theoretical like building a bridge from the earth to the moon - anyway, they would sometimes say some illogical things so I would butt in to point out the illogic.  My husband got tired of the crazy talk and exclaimed, "Do you realize you sound like a bunch of pajama nerds?"  "Yes, we sound like mom."  "Do you have to argue about everything?"  "Yes, we got it from you.'"

 

19 hours ago, Carborendum said:

A man was looking for an engineer who could help him develop a new invention for a rifle.  When he and his sister (who introduced us) came to my house to discuss the item, I got a better idea of what he wanted.  But I though the discussion could be improved by looking at a floor model.  So, I asked,"Are you a gun owner?"  "yes."

I began to leave the room to go upstairs and hesitated.  I turned and assured,"Don't be scared."  They both smiled a bit.

I brought down three rifles and two handguns.  The sister was a bit shocked.  But he just laughed.  I guess he felt he had found a kindred spirit.

We spent some time going over the weapons and how his invention would work with each of them.

My husband gave my kids their own rifle for their 12-year-old birthdays.  My youngest is now 14 and he has a Mosin Nagant that was used in World War II, a VZ something or other that was used in the Korean War, a .270 winchester, a 12-gauge shotgun, a .22 plinking rifle (his 12-year-old bday gift), and a few weeks ago got the basics of an AR15 that he plans to build himself.  My other son is not much into firepower so he only has his 20-gauge shotgun from his 12-year-old bday gift.  But he's so good at it that he can hit 3 clay birds in one pull.  My husband has his own rifles plus handguns somewhere in the safe.

 

19 hours ago, Carborendum said:

*****************************************

My eldest was upset the other day and decided to go for a walk to cool down.  When he gets into these moods, he tends to be rather oblivious to the world around him.  He ended up walking on a major road on the shoulder.  He was also barefoot because he hates wearing shoes.  We can barely get him to put them on when we go to church, a restaurant, or shopping.  He does realize he has to wear them for work.

Anyway, the police were called because "someone is walking barefoot on the side of the road!!!"  A friend happened to be driving by and she saw police talking to him.  She phoned us.  I took off in my car to go to the site.

On my way out I noticed a police car coming towards me.  I rolled down my window.  He rolled his.  We exchanged introductions.  When we had discussed the situation I had to ask,"So, people called the police because he was walking down the shoulder of the road?"

"Well, he was barefoot too."

"I didn't know that was illegal."

"Well, it's not criminal, but it is odd behavior."  I rolled my eyes.

Radios went back and forth.  My son is being brought to my home by another officer.  During that time, he discovered that he could get out of a pair of police handcuffs.

Back at my house the second officer told me that he had to search my son and brought out two pocket knives.  I reached for them and said,"Yeah, that's normal."

"That's normal?" I had to look at him weird.  I'm thinking,"Who doesn't carry a pocket knife?"

Eventually, the police completed what they thought was their job.  I was trying to be patient, realizing they have a tough job.

 

This is funny!  We haven't had cop incidences, thank goodness.  Not even with the cop that patrols our neighborhood.  They do walk around the house barefoot but they always put on flip flops or shoes outside.  They have indoor slippers (I grew up wearing indoor slippers and outdoor slippers and play shoes and going out shoes and church shoes...) but they never wear them.

 

19 hours ago, Carborendum said:

We visited the Insect Museum in New Orleans.  Apparently, it is a federal building.  And in every federal building, nothing dangerous (including pocket knives) are allowed in the building.  My infant at the time did not have a pocket knife (we're a family of 9).  Everyone else had a pocket knife.  I emptied my pockets of two pocket knives.  My son emptied his pockets of (if I remember correctly) 5 knives.  Poor security guard at the front desk shook his head.

Then I had to go walk three blocks away where we had parked the car to deposit them and come back to join the family.

Normal in my family too!  My husband - he's a big time scout dude - gave my 2 kids their own pocketknife for their 8-year-old birthdays.  They each have a wicker basket in their bedside table where they deposit all their knives before school and before bedtime.  In addition, my oldest kid has 6 samurai swords hanging on the fireplace mantel that he won in competitions.  He also has a fancy jeweled dagger on that mantel.  The youngest kid has a collection of fishing/filet knives in his tackle box.  And then they have their escrima sticks.  They've been wanting a telescopic one so they can carry them in their pockets.  They couldn't find ones that get small enough to fit.

 

19 hours ago, Carborendum said:

We're a reading family.  This is difficult when I came from a movie family.

I was telling a story that involved Harrison Ford.  My family had no idea who he was.

When I speak of Brandon Sanderson or John Flanagan or Shannon Hale, they know all about them.

And at church, seminary, and institute, they are often bored because the classes are geared towards the level of other kids who have hardly even heard the seminary scriptures.

When my son (Ffenix) was 8, he was in the oldest class of junior primary.  Many of those kids (even 8 year olds) couldn't read -- or at least not well enough to read a scripture impromptu.  So, the primary president said,"Ok, it's time for the scripture of the week... oh... (realizing that she had been there long enough to realize that few could even read) and... uhmmm...  let's see... Ffenix, could you come read the scripture for us?"  Seriously, he was the only child in the room that could read scriptures.

You know, you're right.  That seems to be a common thing in my ward too that primary-aged kids - even the 11 year olds - are not proficient in reading aloud. 

We're a reading and movies family.  For example, we're all big Star Wars fans - we've seen all the movies a quadzillion times (we have the DVD set, then we got the BlueRay set, then we got all the movies on AppleTV) and we've also read most of the books from the universe.  Every year, we go on long drives (like 12+ hours) to visit family, and we usually end up picking Star Wars books to read in the car.  If the book doesn't come in an audio version, we take turns reading the book aloud even when the kids were little.

So, my kids each have a built-in wall-to-wall bookshelf in their bedrooms.  One kid has at least 30 books just from the Drizzt series.  The other has at least 30 books just from the Warriors (cats) series.  Interestingly, they have very different tastes in books so they don't have much duplication between their bookshelves.  Oh yeah - they get their own book even if the other kid has it in his bookshelf because I was thinking of having these books handed down to their own kids.  My siblings and I had a tug-of-war on who gets to own our childhood books.  We had a collection of hardbound classics, a hardbound collection of Dr. Seuss, etc. that I wanted.  Anyway, I was trying to avoid the same thing with my kids.  But then, this might have been a waste because digital books are now in vogue.

So, my oldest kid has this strange ability to speed read.  I don't even know how or when it happened.  We sometimes read a book silently together - a remnant of the days when I would read to them when they were little - and one time, he gave up in frustration because he can't wait for me to finish before he flips the page.  I was surprised, so I said I'll read faster... I read as fast as I could and I couldn't get halfway before he flips the page.

19 hours ago, Carborendum said:

So, what is peculiar about your family?

Well... let's see... we drove from Tampa to Orlando (1.5 hours) and my kids did not run out of songs to sing with the radio.  It started with Bohemian Rhapsody and Under Pressure (they love singing those songs), and got into Rush, Skid Row, Duran Duran, Killers, Tom Petty, and even Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera, etc. etc.  They know all the lyrics!  And they sing in harmony!

And we have tons of pets - including 4 3-foot-plus long snakes (used to be 7, 3 has passed on).

[Guest LiterateParakeet]

Great stories, Carb.  I can understand, I guess, why someone was concerned about your son walking barefoot (it does guy the impression of leaving the house in great haste as if one was in danger...) What I don't understand is why the police felt the need to bring him home, or why they were surprised about the pocket knives.  Do they not have Boy Scouts in your area?  Geez, they were pocket knives not switch blades.  

Anyway, a favorite story about my 15 yr old.- I was trying to persuade him to tell me about his "love life"  (my boys never want to divulge any information about crushes etc to "Mom")  At one point in the conversation I said, "So wait, you've never had a crush on a girl then?"  (Mind boggling to me, but he assures me that he does like girls.)

He said, "Well, yeah, there are girls I think are pretty just no one with a personality as awesome as mine."  

O.K.   Not surprisingly, that brought the conversation to an abrupt ending, LOL. 

Something I think is fun and unique about our family is that we are all really into musicals and my kids in particular like old music and old films (as well as current stuff).  My oldest son once told me, in shock, that NONE of his friends had ever heard of or seen, Harvey.  And we almost called off his pending wedding when we found out his fiance had never seen Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.  (He remedied that though, and she seemed to enjoy it well enough that we allowed them to marry  . . .) 

[Guest]

Two or three times a month, we have a gaming night at home.  We play various games including computer games and watch a movie.

Last night the power went out for about 8 or 9 hours.  We couldn't do anything we had planned.  We had an impromptu Shakespeare discussion.  We had a ball talking about Benedict's 180 on the merits of marriage.  We went over some sonnets.

Then we had a long discussion about TEOTWAWKI type topics and politics.  That got us tired out and we went to bed with dreams of sugar plumbs.

Edited August 13, 2017 by Guest

[Guest MormonGator]

11 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

Two or three times a month, we have a gaming night at home.  We play various games including computer games and watch a movie.

Last night the power went out for about 8 or 9 hours.  We couldn't do anything we had planned.  We had an impromptu Shakespeare discussion.  We had a ball talking about Benedict's 180 on the merits of marriage.  We went over some sonnets.

Then we had a long discussion about TEOTWAWKI type topics and politics.  That got us tired out and we went to bed with dreams of sugar plumbs.

Wow! Dude, that's a lot like how I grew up. Every month or so we'd play on the Commodore 64 or watch a movie together. Great memories. 

[anatess2]

On 8/13/2017 at 10:35 AM, Carborendum said:

Two or three times a month, we have a gaming night at home.  We play various games including computer games and watch a movie.

Last night the power went out for about 8 or 9 hours.  We couldn't do anything we had planned.  We had an impromptu Shakespeare discussion.  We had a ball talking about Benedict's 180 on the merits of marriage.  We went over some sonnets.

Then we had a long discussion about TEOTWAWKI type topics and politics.  That got us tired out and we went to bed with dreams of sugar plumbs.

Hats off, Carb!  That's amazing!

My kids couldn't get into poetry.  They grew up on Dr. Seuss, of course, but couldn't get beyond that.