Non-funny story
I actually did have one relative who was crazy in the not-so-good way. I kinda wish I had been able to meet her- but great-grandmothers tend to die long before you get the chance to know them, unfortunately.

Agnes and Robert came over from Ireland sometime in the 1800s, presumably during the Potato Famine or some such. They settled in Canada a little bit north of Niagara Falls and built a working farm there. I'm told that Robert did the majority of the construction work on the house himself- if not all of it. He was an insomniac who would get up at 3:00 am and go do chores until breakfast, then work until lunch, then until dinner, and keep going until dark. He would then read the newspaper cover to cover and go to bed about midnight- and get up again at three to do it all over again.

Imagine being married to such a person. Imagine being married to such a person out in the middle of nowhere, with no one for miles in any direction. And on top of it all, imagine if your spouse took the crops to town and spent three days drunk and blew a couple thousand dollars in the process (bearing in mind that this was the 1800s, when that was enough to buy a house), then come home so mad at himself that he once hit a solid oak door hard enough with his fist that he cracked it.

My father's cousin remembers her grandmother as only smiling once in all the years she knew her- and she saw her on a daily basis. The pictures of her that I've seen show a woman whose face is permanently drawn into an expression of an intense emotion I'm not sure I could name- as though she were on a wild rollercoaster ride and knew that she couldn't get off of it, ever.

Agnes got increasingly strange in her old age, and refused to eat in the house, preferring to take her meals in the barn. I think she ultimately moved out to the barn shortly before her death.

All I know is that when I saw the family pictures of her, I saw her looking out from the depths of her own hell.

My dad and I are both rather famous for having The Whammy, a glare that will freeze men in their tracks and cause small children to burst into tears. If I get angry, people start backing away from me even if I say nothing. Dad and I joke about it, as it can be rather comical at times- but I now know the origin of it. When I see that glare in my own reflection's eyes, I see Agnes looking out at me.

If I had gotten to meet her, I wonder what she would have had to say...
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Fri 6 Jul 2007, 16:26, Reply)