Oh Yeah!....I've Got 'Nutty' Folks in My Family!!

     Okay....I've been wanting to do this post for a long time. Not for any particular reason, except to say it out loud!...I haven't done it before because I didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings. Especially not anyone who might recognize that I was, in fact, hurting their feelings! But now I'm convinced....they'll never know the difference! ^_^
     Some will never know the difference because they are no longer with us. Others are 'no longer with us'....in other ways!! *wink! wink!*
     What am I talking about?!....'Nutty' folks! LOL...'Nutty' folks in my family...And before you think I'm being cruel, I'm not talking about folks with uncontrollable mental illness. I know what a struggle it is to not have your mind work 'with' you! I would never down-grade anyone battling with mental illness.
    What I mean when I say 'Nutty' folks is folks who seem to walk around in the world, totally confident, but to the beat of their own drum...I've got a lot of those in my family! In fact, I may be considered one of them!! ^_^ But lately it seems that I'm noticing how many of us there are....wrapped around our family tree like a strangling vine!! LOL

       I told you, a while back, about my Uncle who never threw anything away. By the time he passed away his house...his 3 bedroom house...had become a tunnel, basically! When you went into his house there was only one direction you could walk...the tunnel...because he had things piled up on top of things, (I'm talking T.V.s and tables, people!) and he collected newspapers and piled them up everywhere too.
     The 'Nutty' part was that he was a brick mason by trade and could have built himself a larger space if he wanted to!...*shaking my head*...My husband loved him, because he used to tell the biggest 'tales' you ever heard! And he could tell them in such a way that, if you didn't know him, you couldn't tell whether he was telling the truth or not!
     One time he told my husband that he was walking out in the woods and he heard this repeated cracking sound, like a man with a whip cracking it in the air. He said it sounded like a "CRACK!" and then an echo. He said he tried to ignore it because he was all alone and he didn't want to get into any 'situation' out this deep in the woods all alone! {He was a black man, and this was in the South,...Georgia,...back when racial issues were a "REAL" issue!} 

      Anyway....he decided to do a little bit of sneaky investigating, moving slowly, peeping around trees. And lo and behold, what do you think he saw?!....A 'Whipper snake' jumping up and down next to a big tree, whipping himself up against it over and over, with bark flying everywhere!!! LOL
     He says he ran for his life once the snake caught a glimpse of him, because he didn't want to end up having to 'play dead' and have this whipper snake stick his tail up his nose to see if he was breathing!!!......He was just plain 'NUTTY'!! LOL But my husband believed every word, not really knowing my Uncle that well, and not having lived in the South. It took me years to convince him that my Uncle was 'pulling his leg' (joking with him).
     That's only ONE 'Nutty' person in my family though! I could tell you story after story about them: My spinster-type Aunt who, every year for Christmas (we celebrated it when I was a kid) would give my father a new white Bible, and my sisters and I would get a pair of underwear with a rubber band across the crotch part! (Sorry. I know...too much information. LOL) Why she did this, we will never know... 'Nutty'! ^_^
     Or my Cousin, the funeral director, who refused to go in anyone's front door! In one of the houses we lived in, when I was young, we had spiral stairs that led up to the kitchen from the back door. No one ever came to visit us from the back door because they knew we had a dog...a German Shepard mix...that we kept in the back stairway at night to dissuade thieves from breaking in. He was the only one that ALWAYS came into the house that way...at night! The dog, who barked ridiculously even if a car drove by on the street, NEVER barked when he came to the house. We'd be sitting there eating dinner or something and all of a sudden there'd be this LOUD "Knock! Knock!"...It scared us EVERY time! But we always knew who it was!...Mr. 'Nutty McNutty'!! LOL
     He was also known to take his dates to the funeral home and eat take-out meals on the embalming table!!...No! I'm not making this up!! LOL...Maybe this explains why I so feverishly seek calm in my life, and need so many naps!!! ^_^

     Trust me when I tell you that I could go on here for days!!! But I won't!...^_^ Do you have 'Nutty' folks in your family too?! I think I've got new ones coming out of the woodwork lately.....and I'm slowly becoming one of them!! HELP ME!! LOL


Nutty Folks in Your Family

Are there 'Nutty' folks in your family?
(not that there's anything wrong with that!)
Folks with a lean toward the peculiar,
that some would call 'crazy as a bat'?!

Do you find you make excuses
for the behavior you often see?
While you're secretly glad that you
MARRIED into this family!

Are conversations all one-sided,
with your head always cocked sideways;
but you remember when they were sane,
that is, back in the 'good ole days'?!

Are the 'Nutty' folks in your family...
(not that there's anything wrong with that!)
collectors, hoarders, oddball misfits,
and the best friend to every cat?!

When seasons come around,
do you get gifts you can't explain?
Does their hearing seem affected
when their focus starts to wain?

Do they twist your words (like "Hi!")
and think you're putting out the welcome mat?
Look out! Now 'Nutty' is coming for dinner!
(not that there's anything wrong with that!)