i may be posting a few stories here.
first up, my deceased father - he was mentally ill, enough to make his life and the lives of those around him amusing and unpleasant, even dangerous at times, but not quite enough to have him confined to a madhouse. a few times he was violent, but most of the time he just did odd things that made no sense to anyone whose brain worked in a conventional manner.

the house we lived in had a leaky cellar, and to fix that he took a huge drill bit and bored holes through the concrete out into the ground around the house, probably a few hundred of them. needless to say, the cellar just got wetter after that, but he thought water would only flow out, not in via his magic holes.

he would often (about once per week) feel slighted or believe that someone in the family had stolen his property (and since he was a patriarchal asshole, EVERYTHING was his property), and that started him lining up us kids and his wife, then pulling out his rifle and pointing it at us until we confessed. sometimes we had done something nefarious (we were awful little beasts), but more often he was hallucinating and there was no way for us to resolve the problem. the gun was always loaded, too - he made a point of loading it in front of us as part of his ritual. when the boyfriend of one of my sisters heard of this, he removed the firing pin and filed it down so it wouldn't work - dear old dad was enraged when he discovered this.

he beat up a couple of the older kids too, and not in any sort of corporal punishment manner that might be excused by others - they were brutal beatings, lots of blood and at-hand weapons used. i only remember the police involved a couple of times, but in those days (late 60s, early 70s), a man's home was his domain. if there were no deaths, all you had to do was not annoy the neighbours too much and you weren't arrested.

he'd also pick his nose and rummage through communal food items (bowls of snacks, etc.), which was revolting, just so he could have all the food for himself and eat it leisurely.

while all of this was going on, he built a small museum and collected steam-powered vehicles, restoring them with quite a refined hand for someone with zero education. years later we discovered he'd amassed a valuable collection of vehicles and peripheral items, and after his death we've been finding more in warehouses - he may have been quite a bit wealthier than we'd thought. i have more museum stories, but that's another topic.
( postbear has metal knees, Sun 2 Nov 2008, 18:50, 4 replies)

Yay
for the sister's boyfriend and the firing pin!
(Juan Quar is clinging to her front teeth on, Sun 2 Nov 2008, 18:59, closed)

indeed
your sisters bf sounds like a good guy!
(loobyla, Mon 3 Nov 2008, 23:38, closed)

Yay for the sister's bf and the firing pin..
Glad he didn't kill anyone. I dunno what to think of this.. sounds like he'd be given nowadays the same diagnosis as I have and be put on medication - and the newer meds are better than the old ones (but still nowhere near approaching the same dimension the word "cure" lives in). I want to say "poor guy" but.. oh well, glad you all got through it. *Click* because this interested me greatly.
(lost, Sun 2 Nov 2008, 21:56, closed)

Amazing, isn't it ...
Times change and often more-so-the-better.

I wish to slap every twat who whines about how kids don't respect their elders and back in my day it would've been national service for the lot of them ... blah blah blah. They often forget that in 'their day' respect was based on horrible violence.

Hugs for the horrors and clicks for the story.

Happy Birthday too man ... don't worry, you'll be old for an awful lot longer than you were ever young.
(Que?, Sun 2 Nov 2008, 23:32, closed)