My family's mad. I don't mean the "I just got abducted by aliens" kind of mad (although I'm not sure about my little brother, - joking, Tiddles!), I mean the kind of madness that, every so often, comes out with absolute gems that leave us all choking with laughter.
An up and coming classic is the pigeon story where, travelling down to our grandparents, a pigeon flies up from the middle of the road, and smacks into the windshield. Before anyone else, my little brother comes out with "Ten points to Gryffindor!"
Bear in mind, this is the same little brother who repeatedly has problems with glass of any shape or form - on a holiday to Turkey, he managed to walk into a floor-to-ceiling window, a foot to the left of the actual door. On a trip to France, when asked to pay at the toll-booth, he forgot to roll down the window and smacked his head. Twice.
My sister managed to give the best evils I've ever seen to an elephant rider in India, only for her to turn around and realise, via me, that it wasn't the man who flicked her cap, but actually a monkey pooping on her hat.
My eldest brother is renowned for grumpy, expletive-filled rants against politicians, banks, the BBC, and just about the entire world that leaves us all crying with fits of the giggles, and I, during a discussion about holidays, managed to ask what there is for terrorists to do in Boston. I genuinely meant to say tourists, considering that Boston has like all others, reluctantly joined the list of cities hit by terrorism with its marathon bombings.
But my family's not just amazing for the laugh-out-loud moments it has. There's also all the family jokes, like the chicken noises at stupid moments - my big brother pulled this off in a monumental fashion when, just after I'd said to my sister, "I say this with all of my control and mastery of the English language", he looks at me, cocks his head to one side and clucked. Now, I'd meant to say "Swivel" - again, another family joke - but it still worked!
And then there's the family insult, complete with interchangeable words. The basic form is just "you're an idiot", with the comeback "your face is an idiot", although idiot has gone from... well, idiot, to panini, to fridge, to turd, to melon, and so on.
Granted, my family still has arguments. I managed to argue with my little brother Eduardo* over Jurassic World and whether or not they could actually bring back dinosaurs; I've argued with my sister Flora* countless times about my fashion choices; apparently backpacks aren't always useful.
But families are far more important than most people today realise. Today it's all about kids having kids, as Jeremy Kyle would say, and they think it's meaningless until they get the consequences of kids - no more schooling, no more socialising at all hours. Friends go from hundreds to a few who don't mind that there's a baby.
My point is, we've gone from Medieval family values, where there used to be an entire family plus servants sharing one bedroom to parents becoming grandparents before they've had their first job!
Granted romance has gone forwards and then had a reversal between Medieval times and now - it's gone from political marriages to marriages for love to not even getting married at all. But now, the togetherness of the family is slowly disappearing. There's very little stability for children, if any, when it used to be that families had to stay together, no matter what.
We've lost, as Jodi Picoult points out, the role each family member has:
"I woke up one morning thinking about wolves and realized that wolf packs function as families. Everyone has a role, and if you act within the parameters of your role, the whole pack succeeds, and when that falls apart, so does the pack."
But I think it's not just the role each person has within a family. Strong relationships mean a strong family. Strong families mean a strong society, and that all translates up. It will take strong families to improve this world, and Will Durant has, I think, summed this up brilliantly:
"The family is the nucleus of civilization."
It took one family millions of years ago to lead to over 7 billion people today. So my peers can keep their family values and opinions, thanks. I love my family just the way it is, warts and all, and I couldn't be prouder or happier to be a part of it.
*Names have been changed.
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