Apeloverage
I know what your grandmother's problem is.

She doesn't get out much.
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 11:22, Reply)

My mum's old uncle Jack
was the favourite uncle in the family as he was so good to my mum and her brothers. He made toys and played with them every time he came over to visit. In his later years, when I was a kid, he even taught me how to putt (part of this involved cutting a hole in the middle of my gran's lawn!) which I enjoyed even though I have no interest in golf.

However, looking back on all of this with my uncle once, we thought that with the benefit of an adult mind, Jack's life as seen by others didn't really add up. We reckon he was gay and only married because being seen to be homosexual wasn't an option in those days. And he and his wife had a lodger who stayed with them for many years until his death, a one-armed Pole who was displaced during the war. He went everywhere with them, and we reckon that he probably saw active service in auntie Nan's bed quite regularly.

Jack was a nice old chap, but odd - one Christmas he was staying with my grandparents when my mum and her brothers were kids, and fitted a bolt to the outside of the kids' bedroom so they wouldn't be able to get up and open their presents before he was up! And my gran and grandad let him do it!
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 11:17, Reply)

my grandmother

has gone very eccentric in her old age. She moved into a TINY house, barely more than six feet long and hardly big enough to stand up in. And that's not the weirdest bit - it's under the ground! And in a cemetery.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 11:14, Reply)

true story

One of my grandmother's female cousins or something like that, apparently thought that trees were magnetic, which is why cars always crashed into them. I'm told she wasn't mad so much as smart and frustrated because she was expected to be a wife and mother.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 11:09, Reply)

My wife's grandad
Tame compared to some already posted, but here goes:

A few years back he decided that being around his wife was making him ill (i.e. she, and indeed all women, carry some sort of germ) so he moved out of the house and set himself up in the coal shed. At first he only slept out there but as time went on he spent more time there (even had a makeshift kitchen) until eventually she told him to hop it -- just one year shy of 50 years of marriage, they got divorced.

He married again, but pretty soon the same thing started to happen with his second wife so he got a house of his own a few miles away, although they stayed married (and still are, even now he's moved two hours' drive away). He was fairly normal for a while after that, but then decided that all his furniture was infected so he dumped it and replaced it with plastic garden furniture.

He cooks everything from first principles -- he won't eat any processed food (except biscuits) because he thinks it's poisoned (which is probably not that far from the truth, but anyway...). He cleans his clothes with a mop -- the same one he uses for the floors. And he has developed the theory that dust motes are actually matter being created by sunlight.

Then again, he's now 96 and looks twenty years younger, so he must be doing something right.
( reallywittyname veraciously conspues lexiphanicism on, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 10:58, Reply)

Auntipathy.
My mum has 5 sisters and a brother, they live all over the UK now but apart from our lot they're all down in england/wales.

Thing is, they were all born in Glasgow, so while individually they all have the accents of wherever they're living, put them together and the ol' glasgae starts to emerge.

At that point it's best to retire to a minimum safe distance of the next room, as the pitch and speed of the chatter rises to a constant humming noise known to cause nosebleeds.

I don't know if this is just a glasgow women thing, but whenever they're together they seem to form a collective intelligence that communicated through incredibly high speed speech.
(Andari, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 10:41, Reply)

Which way is up?
In a spirit of joie de vivre, my mum decided that she'd accompany us on a Ferris wheel at Goose fair in Nottingham, forgetting momentarily that she has a fear of depths, and uttered the above immortal phrase which is the working title for her biography.
As far as I know, there is only one usual circumstance where determining 'up' is a problem - to whit being buried alive after an avalanche(in which case, dig a small hole around your head and spit - if it hits you in the face you spat 'up' and if it doesn't, you spat 'down'/ray meers)

The other day I took her out in my car, she sat in the front, my missus sat in the back. "Urgh is smells of hamster bedding back here, it's disgusting!" says my missus.
My mum apologises, convinced she is in her own car.....

Click "I like this" if you're convinced, as we are, that she has early onset Alzheimers :(
(Countryslicker, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 10:09, Reply)

Grandad story no. 2
The Resident Loon's story about redneck engineering reminded me of my grandad's methods of fixing things.

In the spare bedroom of my grandparents' house, the ceiling light was one of these three-bulbs-at-120-degrees-from-each-other affairs. Each bulb had a wee cloth lampshade with tassels. Those of you who remember the '70s will know the type (even though this particular shade was there well into the late '80s!)

Anyway, one of these lampshades got a dirty mark on it. Just how this happened when it was 8 feet from the floor I don't know, but anyway my grandad, who was tighter than a duck's arse, decided that he would fix it. The mark proved impossible to remove by normal cleaning methods, so rather than do what any normal person would do, and buy new ones, he decided to effect a repair.

He painted them.

With emulsion paint.

They were made of cloth remember.

Actually, he made rather a good job of them, and the project was entirely successful until the lights were switched on, at which point the light shone through, revealing not only the original dirty mark, but also all the runs and patchy bits in the paint job.

My gran was delighted, as she got to buy a new set of lampshades, and the rest of the family were also highly amused as we all got to go in and turn on the lights for a laugh.

There's also the time when my gran complained that she didn't have anywhere to hang her dishtowels in the kitchen. My grandad fixed this too. He hammered a row of 6-inch nails into the end of the kitchen table!
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 10:05, Reply)

Right . . .
My Mum used to sing to electrical appliances when I was younger, as apparently this made them work quicker. I grew up thinking that this was the norm and got some odd looks when, at my friends house, I suggested that we get her mother to sing to the VHS player as it wasn't working.

My Dad talks to himself. This on its own isn't that crazy, but he ends up arguing with himself and once got so angry with himself that he punched himself in the face.

My Dad's parents tried to kill me when I was a baby (by feeding me milk that was several days old and had been left outside)as they didn't approve of my parents getting together and of course the only logical thing to do was kill their offspring . . .

My Mum's parents are the ones that left the porn on in the house when we went to visit.

My Great Grandmother (on my Mum's side) once stopped us entering her house when we went to show her my younger brother a week or so after he'd been born as, according to her, "he's the spawn of Satan, that one".

And my brother thinks he's a God. He calls himself Treelord and has a hymn entitled 'Glen'.

I'm just waiting to see what my madness will be ... *twitch*.

(Link's sfw bytheway. Only links to previous QOTW)
( Fluffy elephants, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 9:23, Reply)

wife's grandmother
She's dead now, but she was was mad as a blender full of squirrels while she lived. In the latter stages of Alzeimers, she lived in a delusional world of hatred and paranoia. For example:

- She would publicly spit at anyone with a beard on the assumption that they were Jewish (as a typical Polish pensioner, she despised Jews).
- Her eyebrows had been plucked invisible over time, so she marked them in with an eye-pencil as thick as a thumb. The lines extended almost to her temples, making her look like a Vulcan.
- She accused her family of stealing her false teeth and demanded to look in everyone's mouth. She found them in the end - in her own mouth.
- She often did farts that sounded like someone ripping a hessian-backed carpet. We would just continue eating the meal without comment.
- At Christmas dinner one year, she began to shout at me in Polish, saying that she'd met me on a train to Warsaw in 1973 and that I had stolen her sandwiches. I was 2 in 1973. And in Sheffield,

On the other hand, she'd had a hard life. Her first husband was executed in the street by the Gestapo, she brought up her children in a forced labour camp and her second husband ran away. Then she had almost a lifetime of forced Communism.
(frankspencer, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 9:13, Reply)

My Aunt
One day, me and my parents decide to visit my aunt for tea, buscits and some idle chit chat, then it get's interesting when the converstation turns to one of my other aunts. Turns out she was on the front of our local newspaper for running not one, but two brothels. My aunt was a madam
(Runningwithsporks Something something darkside, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 9:11, Reply)

Oh yeah....
and my Auntie Pat is my mum's sister
Auntie Pat is married to Uncle Freddie
Uncle Freddie has a son called John
John is married to Sheila
Sheila is Auntie Sheila
My Auntie Pat's sister

Get it?

No me either!
(Jugular, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 9:09, Reply)

Family Occasions
Ma Jugular has nine siblings, only one of whom is normal in any real sense of the word, they all have about 6 kids, all live in Middlesborough.

Family occasions involve:

One argument about who wasn't invited

One argument about who was invited but didn't come

One argument about the quality of the food

Copious booze

Discussion about the age of my uncle's new girlfriend (he's in his 40's, girlfriend's are rarely older than 22).

Reminder/humiliation of said uncle's ex-wife's subsequent lesbianism

Talk of who's due in court, what for and how much time they're going to get.

Discussion of who's going to get a smack for grassing up person above or who actually did it, usually the bloke next door!

Random pregnant cousin gets drunk

Everyone else gets drunk

Whoops up side your head

Maudlin discussion of dead relative

Heated discussion about who's fault it was that dead relative is dead (this was a particularly fun discussion at my nan's funeral who died after getting pissed at her sisters funeral and falling down the stairs, breaking her neck)

Punch up between at least two siblings

Huge punch up as other siblings try to break up original fight

Someone gatecrashes party

Gatecrasher gets punched

Emergency services arrive, gatecrasher gets blame.

Emergency services join in the fun

I go home to Liverpool and vow never to go up there again.

Got a cousin's child's christening next week

*gulps*
(Jugular, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 9:04, Reply)

Humph.
Family too sane, feel like I'm missing out here. My old man used to have a succesful building trade and my mum was good at tending to the garden.

Normal childhood really.

Have a good day,
George West
(Mozchops ... just not in the face, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 8:58, Reply)

Seeing as most of the stories relate to mad grandfathers
here's one about mine.

My grandad died aged 92, a few years back, but for a good while before that he was going daft (there's probably some proper medical term for "going daft" but you get the idea). Anyway, my favourite story about him is that one morning my gran awoke to find my grandad in the bedroom putting on his black suit (over his pyjamas!) and about to put on a black tie.

"What are you dressed like that for?" she asked.

"I'm goin' tae a funeral", came the indignant reply.

"Eh? Whose funeral?"

He thought for a second or two....

"Damned if I ken!"

And that was that, so he took off the suit and got back into bed.

Fortunately, he was quite at ease with his condition in that he didn't know he had it, and although in the end he didn't know where he was or what day it was, he was quite happy.

Plenty more stories about him to come, I feel....
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 8:37, Reply)

Poor, dead Great Aunt Dorothy
Great Aunt Dorothy was brought up in the Indian Raj and never did a stroke of work in her life.

Already somewhere to the right of Margaret Thatcher, she became even more extreme as she got older to the point that she would remark that it "was a shame that nice Herr Hitler died. He would have sorted out the immigration."

We foolishly had her round to stay for two weeks, during which time we were not allowed to watch ITV ("Full of bearded common people and communists") and BBC1 was barely tolerated ("Full of bearded communists").

One Sunday, forced against our will to watch Songs of Praise ("Good, sturdy, BRITISH television") the camera scanned across the congregation and settled squarely on a not unattractive black lady singing along to All Things Bright and Beautiful.

This was not Great Aunt Dorothy's idea of Bright and Beautiful in the slightest. In fact, she was going bright red and fit to explode. And she did, in classic Alf Garnett language, spittle flying from her inexpertly rouged lips:

"Good Lord! It's a bloody coon! On Songs of Praise! Have the BB-bloody-C gone stark raving mad? It's a bloody coon!"

She was asked to leave, and told in no uncertain terms never to darken our door again. Then she died.

Hooray for non-racist parents!
( Scaryduck LIKES EGG, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 8:20, Reply)

Mum
My mum has a disability which means she sounds like a moomin when she talks.
(Jugular, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 8:11, Reply)

My Great Nan
was so gone, she would fry her breakfast in Domestos
( Kris Fucking Kristofferson, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 8:10, Reply)

My mum's a paranoid schizophrenic...
..no really she is.

We're always having a laugh.

This is how schizo brain works;

I visit, she says I look a little tired -"Yes, I've been working hard" I reply...Two weeks pass, during which time she's been working out the REAL reason for my tiredness.

So at some point I'll visit and she'll put on her mad face -slight frown, staring eyes, resolute pursed lips- and tell me she knows.

She knows I've been hiding in the tree outside her bedroom window spraying her with poison while she sleeps.

I'll start to gently dismantle this particular psychosis, and she'll be explaining why she knows I'm trying to kill her.

I know when I'm getting through to her, coz she'll give me some tea and cake. Then as I'm leaving she'll squeeze my arm and give me a hug, momentarily like a real mum, and tell me "I know you wouldn't do anything to hurt me (success!), it must have been your brother" (oh shitcrap).

.

Edit - Oh and my uncle who drilled a hole in his head to let the evil out, surprisingly common apparently. And another uncle who jumped in a harbour, fully clothed, looked up at his friends, said "come on in the water's lovely" and promptly drowned...what with it being the Outer Hebrides in winter the water was not conducive to life.
( Ring Of Fire A petty, drooling belming butthurt retard., Fri 6 Jul 2007, 7:44, Reply)

Ah, my boyfriends mother
This is really really long, because she's really really crazy...

She can be quite fun to hang out with, and you can definitely be more open with her than with my mother. She once told me that I'd be really fun stoned, not that she was advocating drug use or anything...

This goes both ways, though. I was browsing in a furniture store with her once, and she starting rating the beds based on how kinky the sex on them could be without collapsing or breaking them. This included a short rant on the benefits of old brass beds and canopy beds, because they're so much more versatile. I remind you, this is my boyfriend's MOM!

Unfortunately, not all of her psychoses are as amusing. A few years ago, our landlord asked us to shampoo our carpets. Fair enough, we have 4 cats, so they weren't exactly spotless. So, we mentioned to her that we were planning on renting a shampooer. She panics that we might rent a steamer instead, as according to her they'll permanently alter the carpet fibers and you'll destroy the carpeting and it'll never stay clean again, because steam is EVIL. So, what does she do? She goes online, researches for weeks, and buys a shampooer. I know what you're thinking, it's very nice of her to do that for us, and why are we calling her crazy? Well, for one, we were content to rent one and be done with it, and also, she had a shampooer in her basement, that she didn't want to lend us as we couldn't spread the contaminants in our rug to her house. She has hardwood floors.

So, she buys the shampooer, then gets on the phone and starts bargaining with the wholesale carpet shampoo manufacturer, who's legally only allowed to sell to professional cleaning companies, and convinces them to sell her a few cases of shampoo. She brings it to our apartment, and decides that the kitchen is too dirty, so we have to clean the kitchen first, so we don't track dirt over our clean carpets. So what does she do? She stays at our place for 3 days scrubbing our kitchen, also putting us to work (keeping in mind that we're both very busy with work and school) on useful chores like washing the refrigerator. This makes her realize that our pantry could also use some organization. Cue two day break while she drives to every Walmart in Chicago looking for ways to maximize our storage potential. She comes back with three different spice racks, a bunch of different shelving units, and spends another two days organizing the pantry. But what did she find? VEGETABLE OIL! Well, since vegetable oil can kill you, she insisted on throwing away all our oil and buying canola instead. Now, neither she nor we are healthy eaters in general, although we try, but I hardly think that replacing one oil with another oil is gonna make that much difference.

After the pantry, she attacked our bedroom. Another three days at our apartment, going through my clothes (including my unmentionables), then she brings them all over to her house to wash them, and brings them back. She uses this as an excuse to stay another three days. This time, she's emptying and organizing the closets, putting in new shelves, of course, and deciding for us where we want to store all of our stuff. She also worked through the nights, surviving on coffee alone, which meant that my boyfriend often passed out on the couch, so he could wake up for work at 5:30am, while I just made do curled up in a pile of laundry on the bed while she talked at me all night.

It's been about a month now, and the carpet hasn't seen a drop of shampoo.

During this, she also decided to put up curtains in our kitchen, bedroom and bathroom. The first curtains she got for the bathroom were pretty tacky, but luckily for us, our roommate burnt them down. She replaced them with a set I really liked, and I made a point of letting her know how much I liked them. Next week, she brings over yet another set of curtains (actually, two identical ones, with different styles of valance, so we can try them all out)), with fish on them, because she knows we like fish. I was already happy with the curtains I had! But these matched better, and also went well with the new toilet seat she bought us (nothing wrong with the old one, but this one had fish on it).

Still had dirty carpets, at this point. All of these activities also involved 3 day stays at our house.

At this point, she decided that I needed a new wardrobe. So, she went out and bought bags and bags of clothes and brought them to the apartment for me to try on. This eventually morphed into my having to go to the stores with her. Usually in the middle of midterm exams or something, too.

The boyfriend made the mistake of mentioning, as guys do, that a fancy new tv sure would be nice. We both realize that there's no way it's gonna happen, but this inspires her to sit on my computer, looking up tv's through the night, and trying to tell me, when I'm trying very hard to go to bed for class the next day, all about the different technology available. I couldn't seem to convince her that as long as there was a picture, and it was in color, I was happy. Also that we really don't have the money for a tv, ours works fine, and he's just doing the typical guy wanking over plasma screens thing. Unfortunately, no new tv appeared.

By this point, it was starting to get nice and warm out, so we dug out the grill. But our grill wasn't good enough. We HAD to have a propane grill, because grilling with charcoal a few times a year will give us CANCER. So she spent another week researching, then spent $200 on a gas grill for us. Very nice, except that if you're gonna grill on gas, you might as well just dangle a hotdog over the fucking stove, and save the trip down the stairs. Also, there are other things we really would have preferred to use $200 for.

We also cooked indoors a lot. One night, we couldn't decide between the 4 of us what to eat. I think it was simply a matter of what side dish we wanted. This sparked a half hour long tirade about how his grandmother escaped from the nazis on foot, and god knows what she survived on (strong hints of cannibalism), and how horrible it was, and here we were bitching about fucking potatoes, and just fucking pick something and eat it, you eat to live, not live to eat! Funny, as his grandmother was quite a picky eater...

Finally, though, after literally months of this, and 3 uninvited, consecutive nights a week at our apartment, we actually took the shampooer out of the box. We rearranged all the furniture, and got it going, but she wasn't satisfied, so she went online and bought a second shampooer. The plan was that she'd use the new one to shampoo, and the other one to suck up the water. She spent about 2 weeks at our house shampooing, and went over most of the apartment twice.

This is already obscenely long, but I've actually left out a lot. Like the new radiator caps. And the rubber strip at the bottom of the front door. And the three new doorbells.... She also panicked because she convinced herself that the lightbulb on one of our fishtanks would give us skin cancer. The tank isn't even in the living room, where we spend most of our time. I think you get the idea, don't you?

Oh, and she also called literally 6 times a day, leaving pissed off messages if we didn't pick up, and then called him at work and got mad if he wouldn't talk to her there.

To wrap up, my boyfriend can be tactless. If anybody should be used to is, it's his own mother, right? After all, who's in charge of teaching a young lad tact? So, after a few gentle hints that maybe she could give it a rest, he got a little more snippy about her harassment. So, we'd have situations like when we asked her to leave after 3 days once, and she started screaming and crying about how fucking ungrateful we are, and if we love her, the least we can do is at least watch this one movie with her, and then she'll be "out of our way." Finally, one day, she was having problems with the gas company at her house (bills still being sent to her recently deceased mother's house in Florida), and we told her that if her gas was shut off she could stay at our place. Unfortunately, the boyfriend made the mistake of mentioning that if she stayed with us, we really couldn't handle it turning into another crazy nazi work fest (my phrase, not his!). She flipped out, and hasn't spoken to us for 2 years now, thinking, I'm sure (she's told me she's done it to others), that we'll learn how much we needed her and will come crawling back. We're just glad for the break. I called her to invite her to Thanksgiving dinner that year, and she hung up on me after I refused to badmouth my boyfriend to her (and I've always been honest when I think he's in the wrong). Apparently, I don't want to get in the middle because I "just don't care about her."

So, sorry for the interminably long post. Congrats if you made it this far! Think reading it was bad? Try living through a year of it!

Click "I Like This" if you think she may need professional help.
(RDT <>< <>< <>< <>< <>< <>< <>< <><, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 5:14, Reply)

I think I may be the most sane of my family...and that's sad cause
My grandmother (my mother's mother) doesn't drive (thank God) she's pretty much a hermit stays at home and drinks coffee all day and smokes cigarettes and calls her own children and grandchildren all by different names. Her sister, Anna Mae, has a broken down handicap bus in the back of her house to keep all 50 of her cats in and her husband mows the lawn in womens clothes. He is always begging my grandmother to take him to the thrift store to buy new dresses...IDK why seeing as she can't drive. My uncle smells funny, is deaf in one ear has a lazy eye and when he talks he sounds like a combination between a woman and a train whistle, is 40 yrs old never had a girlfriend and has posters of playboy allover his bedroom...at my grandmothers house. He drives a tractor trailer all over the US and takes a shower about once a week. I just got a drunk driving ticket and my Aunt on my fathers side told my friend she heard about it from my gran...she's been dead for 10 yrs....And I am concidered the black sheep of the family??
( Lisette von Falcon, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 4:24, Reply)

Lawns
My dad likes to mow lawns. At the last count he's mowing:

- His own lawn
- His mother-in-laws lawn
- His sisters lawn
- His sisters neighbours lawn
- The lawn at a place my parents own and rent out
- The lawn at the house next door to the place my parents own and rent out
- The lawn at the pub in the next village
- The lawn at the office of the firm he used to work for
- My godfather's lawn

During the summer he mows these twice a week each. That's a full working day of mowing every week, by my reckoning.

Someone once sold him a car worth about 5k for a tenner on the understanding that he'd do some mowing for the seller. Seller failed to realise he'd have done the mowing anyway. The man just loves to mow.
(theweapon never ever bloody anything ever, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 3:29, Reply)

My mother
My mother... She is more stupid than crazy I guess, but here goes anyway! First off, does this look green to you?
I think not. It is BLACK but yet she insists on calling it GREEN! Oh, and a hearse is commonly referred to as a HEARST to her, and a tarp is a TARPIN. Wtf? Oh, speaking of green, my dad calls those brown/black striped cats green. :/
(NancyycnaN Wðñ'† ¥ðµ §hðw §ðmê ¢l姧?, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 3:28, Reply)

so, so many crazy people
my mother is one of 12 siblings and my dad is one of 9, so there are a hell of a lot to choose from.

auntie connie
once rang my mum at 2a.m saying that there was a strange man in her bed. mum just said "connie, is it uncle roy?" it was. she'd forgotten about her own husband.
decorated her kitchen in flowery wallpaper. my sister went in there to get a glass and couldn't find the way out for 5 minutes. she'd wallpapered the door as well.

my brother
if he's frying an egg and it spits at him (the hot fat) he'll spit back at it.
refuses to believe he's colourblind and accuses us of ganging up on him, just to tell him the coat he thinks is green is actually grey.

my mum
talks to the dinner when she's cooking it.
phones me at odd times to ask if i know where she's put her umbrella/glasses/keys.
sings sons with the words wrong at the top of her voice for no reason.
stares at you 2 hours after you arrive at her house and says "hello.

uncle ernie
points at people at family parties and says "i think i'm related to you!"

auntie linda
took my 3-year-old sister to town and lost her, then left her there so she could come home to tell mum she'd lost her. she was about 20 at the time.
forbids anyone from mentioning belly buttons anywhere near her.
refuses to pluck the hairs from her chin, despite the fact that they're so long, she could lay them out at night as tripwires.

uncle ian
greets everybody he sees with "alright, mings!"
thinks taped-up jack duckworth-style glasses are cool.
replies to every question with "ooh, you bloody thing, you!"

that's just a small section of my family. this is why i live alone and will never reproduce.
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 3:12, Reply)

My mom's crazy aunt
My mom had an eccentric aunt who would do all sorts of weird things. Once she was late for a family meeting because, she explained, "I couldn't drive here because I can't do this" (raises arms high over head).

Now this raises two problems.
1) Why do you need to raise your hands over your head to drive a car?
2) If you can't do it, why are you doing it right now for us?

For the other story, I need to explain to you some simple Canadian geography. On the west of Canada you have British Columbia, which is mostly mountains. To the east is Alberta, a prairie province, and east of Alberta is Saskatchewan, part of the same prairie system. This woman had to drive from Alberta to Saskatchewan but was extremely late. Her excuse? "I got lost in the mountains."
(racetraitor has an alibi for, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 2:45, Reply)

My Mother's Cousin May
A few years ago my mother, who escaped from Eccles 40 years ago, went mental with nostalgia and started contacting long lost relatives. All of whom promptly reminded us why we lost contact in the first place. Auntie May, 56, who apparently married a gypsy 30 years ago, and has had a 'hard-life' ever since, came down to London to stay for a weekend. As soon as she arrived we had to go on a mission to indulge her long term alcoholism which could only be slaked by necking a can of Skol 2% every half hour (only available at CostCutter Harrow Road and it had to be Skol 2% nothing else would do). She promptly told me I was soft. They then spent the next 8 hours in tears as she regaled us with a geneaology of familial misery that spanned 70 odd years. At about 10 pm she guzzled half a bottle of Finlandia and then dissapeared for a nap. I thought I was out of the woods, I was wrong.
She snuck back up after half an hour, apparently changed into her 'nightwear', a short white negligee. Her body was a terrible tangle of varicoose vains, cottage cheese thighs and liver spots. The worst was she'd caught me smoking a joint out the window. Shock. Horror. Apparently I was now a drug addict and needed help - Jeremy Kyle style. 'Now sit down on the couch and lets talk about your problem' she said, excitedly bouncing up and down next to me (huurghh!) whilst cracking open another can. It was at this point I noticed her charming habit of champing yellow nicorette compulsively with her big false teeth. In order make each piece last a bit longer she would pull it out of her mouth and stretch between her thumb and forefinger and then wipe her hands on the couch. After 40 minutes of verbal abuse and more tears, (she literally followed me room to room) I finally made a break for it and left the house to wander the streets for 3 hours until I could safely return.
(JonathanMeades whiffling the chode.., Fri 6 Jul 2007, 2:12, Reply)

Fat fucking lazy relative
Technically he is my grandma's sister's kid. Cousin? I don't fucking know. You figure it out! Either way, I do NOT claim that man! let's be nice and call him Joseph, which is not his name.
Examples.
1.) Claimed he was sick and laid up in bed. My other great aunt turns on a Nascar game (self explainatory on that one) and guess who was shown on the big screen jolly as can be? Yep! None other than 'Joseph'. I wonder how they got a bed onto the risers? Hmmm...
2.) 'Joseph' claims to be sooo poor, but yet, never misses a single Nascar game. EVER. He will travel! And he says he doesn't have enough money for food. Trust me, this guy is a FAT ASS! He must be getting it from somewhere!
3.) This one is a rumor, but I believe it just like everyone else does. 'Joseph' had a 'friend' who we will call 'Josh'. Apparently, 'Joseph' and 'Josh' had a bit too much fun. Cue 'Joseph' being rushed to the emergency room with a ruptured asshole.
There are so many stories about this freak, but I will stop there. :P Click I like this if you would be embarrassed to have this in the family.
(NancyycnaN Wðñ'† ¥ðµ §hðw §ðmê ¢l姧?, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 2:02, Reply)

Due to the apparent lack of sanity in my family, I feel I'm over-qualified for this QOTW.

I'm not sure if I should be proud or ashamed.
(is0lati0n, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 1:21, Reply)

Good advice
Granddad to me, aged 17;

"Never trust short people or cripples."
(Mong goose, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 0:43, Reply)