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Families are (e-) Strange
We Just Can’t Keep Our Shit Together
I had friends visiting this past weekend. Two women I have known for the longest period of time in my life. We went to Kindergarten together. We went to Elementary school, Middle and High School together. Considering we are just a smidge over fifty, that is a lot of years to have known these people.
We are from a (very) small town. I’ve written before that our graduating class was under 100. Those 100 people were more or less the same folks we started our schooling with. Such is the way of small-town America.
American mythology tells us that our upbringing, at our points in time, should have been one of the most idyllic. We grew up watching Happy Days in a town whose police force was a near copy of Andy Griffith. We should have forged close family ties, tight relationships, and fond memories.
Yet, as I chatted with these two schoolmates, one theme emerged for all three of us: we are each estranged from at least one family member. Sometimes more.
One friend talked about how her sister was something of a well-known bully in high school, and how that damaged her own relationships with friends or would-be-friends in our town. After years of living in this big sister’s unattractive shadow, she finally threw in the towel. She commented that this sister had, over the…
