the black sheep

[Keller]

Everyone has black sheep in their family. Some of you may even be the black sheep in your family.

I have a few of them. There is one in particular that got me thinking this afternoon.

She is 22. Let's call her Tina. I've seen her once in the last 8 years. It was at my aunt's house (her mom). When Tina arrived at a family gathering, my grandmother discretely asked me whether I had secured my wallet (I was in my bathing suit as it was a pool party) and my wife's purse. She advised us to put them in the trunk of the car. I guess Tina has a slight pill addiction and has stolen quite a bit from my grandmother to fund her addition.

In any case, I disgress.

4 years ago, Tina was pregnant. Tina gave birth to a daughter with significant physical and mental defects. According to Tina's sister, she was using pills while pregnant.

A couple of days ago, Tina requested to be my friend on Facebook. Reluctantly, I accepted her request. She has many pictures of her and her quite seriously physically handicapped/deformed daughter on her facebook profile. It is the first time I've ever seen her, and seeing the pictures enrages me. I really cannot conceive of a more selfish act. Each time I saw a friend of hers write, "OMG u r such a good mom" in the comments to a picture of her daughter, I wanted to vomit.

I guess I just needed to vent.

Someone make me feel better. What fucked up cousins or uncles do you have?

[BriarFox]

I have a cousin who ended up as a pregnant stripper in Texas and then fell off the face of the earth. Hell if I know what she's up to now.

[Ceyrin]

It's just me... and I think that's pretty self explanitory.

Also, my mother was a heroin addict for several years (presumably not while pregnant with me, but hey who knows!) and even ended up overdosing twice - fortunately for her I was there to save her life - twice.

Yes, this is actually serious and not a troll.

[pabstblueribbon]

I think you should stop racially profiling sheep. I mean, how do you know a black sheep is gonna get preggers and eat pills and make tard babies and shit.

Racist.

[Delias]

My entirely family is basically composed of alcoholics, and their kids. A lot of their kids don't drink, because we learned that drunks are assholes... so they are mostly potheads in response to what they've learned. The smart ones all have a mental illness and the dumb ones predominate. I have nieces who speak to me from the age of four as if they were the adult and made the rules. I am given free reign to discipline any child in the family, because I am the only one willing to do it. Everyone else seems to suffer under the "special because they are from MY crotch" delusion.

I'm not really kidding when I say if you locked my entire family in a barn and burned the barn down, you'd probably do mankind a favor.

[pabstblueribbon]

I just want to go on record stating that I don't think kids should be smoking pot.

[ViridianAsp]

My real mother is in fact, a black sheep.

She left my dad and I when I was six weeks old. Growing up in a strict Christian family (all of my family is.), she rebelled and is a wiccan.

She didn't pay child support and was jailed a few times for it, every time the state found her and garnished her wages she would up and quit the job. All this while my dad worked two jobs and went to school so he could support us.

I met her when I was 19, after I had my own son. To find out that I was in fact, more mature than she was at 39. We talked for awhile, but I soon became frustrated with her, I would confront her about how she could have just up and abandoned me, as a mother I didn't understand it myself. After that things between us were strained.

As far as I know from my grandmother, a lot of the boyfriends my mother introduced her to didn't even know she had a kid.

I don't really talk to her anymore since she got remarried and totes the fact that she's such a great stepmom to her step kids. When she has never once in the past few years asked about my own son, her grandchild.

So, there you go.

When people ask me about my parents, I just tell them both are dead.

[Gnome Rage]

I assume that the black sheep in our family would be my brothers. You go to jail, even for a little bit and you're kinda ehhh.

[B4Hand]

I think I may be the..black sheep of my family..simply because I am the most normal. Scary right?

[Mighty Nikkisaurus]

YAY STORY TIME. On my dad's side of the family, the closest we had was my Uncle and that was because of the woman he was married to. We were glad she made him happy so we didn't ever say anything to him or make them uncomfortable, but we didn't go out of our way to invite them to gatherings, etc. There were a few problems..

The worst though was that she really, really stressed my 97 year old grandmother the fuck out. Gram can't really cook anymore so when my sister and I are cooking she hovers nearby and 'helps'.. and she won't eat until everyone else has food and is seated and tucking in. It makes her feel useful and like she's being a good hostess so we don't argue with her and let her do her thing, and basically the fastest way to get her sitting down and eating is to hurry and get dished up yourself. My uncle's wife used to constantly harp on her, tell her to sit down, tell her to stop, argue with her, etc. It would visibly upset her and make her feel bad/like she was being chastised like a child but the lady would NOT get the hint. It was less stressful for my grandma to putter around happily than be cowed into sitting alone in the living room. I remember one time after they left, my gram saying in her sweet little voice, "It's so hard for me to not tell her to fuck off sometimes."

On my mom's side I'm the black sheep. We moved away after my mom died and the way they constantly tell me I'm "JUST LIKE HER" and treat me like Theresa Jr. instead of an individual really creeps me out, and just their general obsession with all things related to her. I can't remember the last time I was at a family event on that side that didn't devolve into long talks about my mother. Shits depressing. They think I'm weird because I don't like to talk about it and because I'm aloof. Oh well.

[Gallows Thief]

Easy one in our family though we do have our prerequisite alcoholics etc. My cousin from Virginia developed quite the meth problem a few years back. This led him down the normal path of theft and robbery. He did a few short stints in prison and then was released. Naturally he went right back to meth. His next robbery resulted him stabbing someone and getting convicted for attempted murder. He was shipped off to Wallens Ridge in Virginia to do 20 years. He of course did not behave and stabbed another inmate getting additional time. I am 100% sure he will never be released. On the bright side he makes a hell of a penpal.

[Kainen]

Everyone has black sheep in their family. Some of you may even be the black sheep in your family.

I have a few of them. There is one in particular that got me thinking this afternoon.

She is 22. Let's call her Tina. I've seen her once in the last 8 years. It was at my aunt's house (her mom). When Tina arrived at a family gathering, my grandmother discretely asked me whether I had secured my wallet (I was in my bathing suit as it was a pool party) and my wife's purse. She advised us to put them in the trunk of the car. I guess Tina has a slight pill addiction and has stolen quite a bit from my grandmother to fund her addition.

In any case, I disgress.

4 years ago, Tina was pregnant. Tina gave birth to a daughter with significant physical and mental defects. According to Tina's sister, she was using pills while pregnant.

A couple of days ago, Tina requested to be my friend on Facebook. Reluctantly, I accepted her request. She has many pictures of her and her quite seriously physically handicapped/deformed daughter on her facebook profile. It is the first time I've ever seen her, and seeing the pictures enrages me. I really cannot conceive of a more selfish act. Each time I saw a friend of hers write, "OMG u r such a good mom" in the comments to a picture of her daughter, I wanted to vomit.

I guess I just needed to vent.

Someone make me feel better. What fucked up cousins or uncles do you have?

I wasn't the one who, didn't graduate high school, got pregnant at 17 and now lives at home OR has to have mommy and daddy's help paying the bills, but somehow I am the black sheep.

[ElvenFury]

We have a more literal interpretation of "black sheep" in our family. Most of us are tall, pale Irish folks with pasty, pinkish skin. The men also tend to go completely gray in their early forties. Every once in a while, though, someone is born a little shorter with dark hair, olive skin, and their hair stays dark well into their senior years.

We're pretty sure that our great grandmother had an affair with the Portuguese guy that lived in the upstairs apartment (of whatever ghetto building in Boston that they lived in during the great depression). That's the family legend anyway.

[Stanley Burrell]

I don't know if it qualifies as "black sheep" per se, but religion has divided a large chunk of my family. It's disgusting. I want to see my first cousins and my uncle. Too much time has passed because of the religion bullshit; and I don't think it's possible to ever rebuild what once was, and it's sad to see people so close together be pulled apart by their Gods. I'd prefer one identifiable black sheep versus this utterly fucked up shit.