I'm wondering how many of you have odd relatives or neighbors that your family have warned you about? My family always warned me to be polite to old Dorothy but don't encourage a conversation. They said she was slightly off her rocker because she lived with another woman and she treated her cats like children. As a child I kept my distance. Then I grew up and had a chance meeting with old Dorothy at the grocery. She asked after the family and how I was doing in college. We had a nice conversation. She knew what people said about her. She said more than half of it wasn't true. She did lived with a woman because they cared about each other and grew up together. After that I talked her a few more times, She passed away around 2003. I wish we had talked sooner. She was much more liberal than my parents.
My mom's father, whom I've never met and don't plan to, because all my aunts say he's a bastard. Yet all of my mom's sisters still maintain contact with him, but she doesn't.
It's the other way around with us. The nutty people, mostly on one side, and their nuttiness were swept under the rug. The nuttiness is mostly about being incredibly difficult and angry, with histories of bad things or bad decisions way earlier in their lives. I have had the opportunity to meet them as adults. My parents like them, or tolerate them, more than I ever could. Based on my own assessments, I will not associate with some of these relatives and, again, they are mostly on one side. ---------- Post added 25th Nov 2013 at 10:15 PM ---------- A short meeting may confirm or refute these claims for you. I'd almost be curious. You're a smart guy, so you can draw your own conclusions. My two cents.
There were crack heads next door to my mom's house while I was living at home. It took forever for the landlord to evict the druggies.
Same here. Our landlord was just dragging his feet. They kept paying him small amounts of rent each month. I think they owed him $1500 or something when he finally evicted them, but the cops were over there all the time. Child Protection Services was over there all the time. I don't see how they didn't lose that place sooner.
My father completely despised his older half-sister and made a point of telling us how awful a person she was. I never recall even meeting her until I was well into my 40's, when she showed up at the hospital to visit Dad after his legs were amputated and it didn't look like he was going to survive. She definitely had her quirks, but we became friends, although I never really shared that with Dad. I even had a friendly conversation with her on the phone only a couple days before she unexpectedly died, and I was one of the handful of people--her husband, daughter, and 2 neighbors--who showed up for her memorial service. It confirmed for the umpteenth time that we shouldn't judge people by what others say about them.
I've only really had one properly "odd" family member; my psychopathic, literally murderous (he tried to deny all hospital services to his own mother to get her money when she was almost dying a few years ago). My traditionally "odd" uncle is a very kind and very sweet man, but he's dissolute and uncertain. As for neighbours, well, a mansion near my house exploded last year, and it was reported to be a meth lab. :lol:
When I was growing up we had one set of neighbors who were "odd" well that was not the word my step-father used they had the address that was transposed from ours and we got their mail sometimes and he would say "great we got the queers mail again" I was not allowed to go down that direction.
From what I understand, my grandfather had a falling out with my great grandfather and the rest of his family to where they cut all connections with my grandfather. He kept my dad away from them, my dad kept us away, and to this day, I don't know any of my family on my dad's side except for a couple of cousins were were related to his mom. I even went on one of those ancestry websites to see if I could find any of my dad's relatives and it literally ends at my grandfather, it's really weird...