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Page last updated:
2008-02-23
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Take it from Charlie—meeting my family is an experience most people wouldn't forget, even though they'd probably wish they could. But, who has the time nowadays, anyway? So here, for your amusement, is an intro to the folks who brought me up. (I just know Bill Gates is my real father and that I was switched at birth!)
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I've never been one for taking family photos, so I've decided to depict my family with the Hollywood characters they remind me of most. So here's "the dish"...
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My Father...
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 is great at his job, but seems dopey about other things. I can imagine him walking into a dark room, thinking, "It's dark in here," then—instead of searching for the light switch—he'd simply sit down and figure that it would probably get light inside sooner or later.
is easily satisfied in life—all he wants is to read his romance and mystery novels (which my mother derides as "trashy") and play tennis. Most of all, he doesn't want to create a stir. (He's no child of the '60s.)
is clueless about the Internet (maybe it's just a passing fad!) and doesn't know how to operate a DVD player.
is a tragically bad-dresser. (The horror, oh, the horror!) Now I know where I get it from.
is hot for Sandra Bullock and Meg Ryan.
is someone who owns every dietary supplement on the face of the Earth and adds to his collection each time he reads an article about some new miracle health product.
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My Mother...
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 is a woman whose job is her life. Having lived in Beverly Hills and hobnobbed with celebrities during her single years, she's since become bitter over shattered dreams of living in a large city and schmoozing it up with socialites. Instead, she's stuck in dreary, small-town Denton for life. She takes out her frustrations on my grandmother, my father, and me with caustic insults that would make your hair curl. I asked my father to get me a new mother for Christmas, but apparently Santa's on strike.
is hopelessly offended by almost everything. Movie previews are "too violent," and she covers her eyes during them. She was shocked by the language in the animated kids' film All Dogs Go to Heaven. She said that the lightweight Streisand flick The Mirror Has Two Faces "should've been rated X." (It was a PG-13). She walked out on How to Make an American Quilt because it was too offensive, even though she was seeing it for my birthday. And she also claimed that there's too much violence in TV's Touched by an Angel. That's why she says the only channel she watches is the Home & Garden Network. Sheesh!
is a Southern Baptist, which led to years of me being forced to attend dreary Sunday School and Church sessions which increasingly became diatribes run by right-wing nut jobs. Nonetheless, she's in favor of women's equality, women working outside the home, and is pro-choice. Oh—and she says she really respects George W. and Laura Bush, even though she's a Democrat. Try to figure out the logic going on here!
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My Grandmother...
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 is excellent at playing piano, bridge, and cooking. She loves watching sports on TV (particularly tennis) and yells at the players when they screw up. She also catches all the Dallas Cowboys games.
is not a "dingbat," but has Edith's good characteristics. Also, like Edith, she's also a very tense and emotional person.
is the Republican in our family (though she's against George W. the second time around). She reads the right-wing American Spectator magazine and thinks that Hillary is the Anti-Christ. And she loved Ronald Reagan.
is big into books about how to be younger and how to get rich. She also loves mystery novels, Stephen King books, and old movies. I've never met anyone who likes to learn new things as much as she does.
is fiercely independent. When my grandmother turned 50, my mother said that she was old and would probably have to be put in a "home" soon. Now, my grandmother is 96, and she still does everything she did at 40, plus she now likes surfing the Net, being part of her women's club, volunteering, and more.
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My Grandfather (deceased)...
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 was the eccentric one of the family, which explains a lot about me, since I think I inherited his nuttiness. Full of bizarre sayings like, "You don't know what a monkey's gonna do until it climbs up a tree," he also embarked on a life-long, unsuccessful conquest to win the Publishers' Clearing House sweepstakes, even if it meant subscribing to magazines he didn't want, like Tin Foil Monthly and American Barnyard.
was paranoid-schizophrenic, but was never treated for it. He always thought someone was out to get him or to poison him. When my Grandmother would make dinner, he'd always ask which plate was his, in order to figure out which was the poisoned one. If she was poisoning the food, she wasn't very good at it, since they were married for 70 years.
was an avid fan of court shows, detective shows (particularly Barnaby Jones), and old westerns. He loved watching televangelist Dr. Gene Scott on late-night TV, as the evangelist smoked his cigar, barked, "Send me some money!", showed footage of riding his Clydesdales, aired his vacation footage with Michael Jackson music playing and with LSD special effects, and sold paintings on the air that he made for $10,000 each.
was a history teacher with a Master's Degree who never mentioned history to me, an excellent trombonist in a jazz band, the owner of a music instrument store, and a retiree who had plenty of time to try to drive my Grandmother nutty.
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