My family is getting ready for a Fourth of July cookout. Dad is grilling chicken, Mom is running around cleaning the house before her guests get here, and I’m just waking up because I work the night shift. I’ve just gotten an allergy test, and I reacted badly to seventy of the seventy-two things they ended up testing me for. 

Mom: “I’m going to put some daylilies on the table.”

Me: “Can we use the ceramic flowers in the other room? I’m allergic to daylilies.”

Mom: “Okay, I’ll use sunflowers.”

Me: “Allergic to those, too.”

Mom: “Daffodils?”

Me: “Can we use the decorative ceramic ones?”

Mom: “I know you’re not allergic to daffodils; I put them in your room all the time!”

Me: “And it always makes me feel terrible because I have a reaction.”

She put the daffodils on the table. I spent the entire meal sneezing and went to work with a massive headache and a rash on one arm where the pollen got to me.

This happened back in the 1970s. I was nearly five and my little sister would have been about three. After growing up in London, we had just moved to a small town.

Mum was taking my sister and me on our first trip to the shops in this new town. My sister was in her buggy and I was walking by the side. As we walked over the crest of a hill, something flat and grey-blue came into view, although neither my sister nor I paid any attention to it until Mum asked us about it.

Mum: “Do you see that blue thing in the distance?”

Sister & Me: “Yes, Mummy?”

Mum: “Do you know what it is?”

Our guesses included a stream, a river, a pond, and a lake until, eventually…

Me: “Mummy, is it the sea?”

Mum: “Yes!”

Sister & Me: “Wow!”

When we were growing up in London, Mum and Dad didn’t have a car, so going to the beach was a very rare event — maybe once a year — so Sis and I were quite taken with this knowledge that we were near the coast.

That night, when Sis and I were in our rooms, Mum came to check that we were asleep and was quite surprised to see me awake. I was really worried.

Mum: “Are you all right?”

Me: “You know the sea, Mummy?”

Mum: “Yes, dear?”

Me: “Will it still be there tomorrow?”

This was long ago, when I was a teenager. I’m in my sixties now. My stepfather was a perfectionist. I wasn’t allowed to shovel the walk in case I missed a spot and someone slipped and sued us. I wasn’t allowed to wash his car because I might scratch it. And I definitely wasn’t allowed to touch his stereo system. Back in those days, a good record player/radio with three-foot-tall speakers was expensive, but the sound quality was amazing. 

One day, my stepfather was listening to the radio on his sound system. 

Stepfather: “You know, if you listened to decent music like this, instead of that garbage kids like these days, I’d let you use my record player.”

Me: “Oh, really?”

I ran upstairs and grabbed the record my friends and I had been listening to every day since it came out the week before. Coming back downstairs, I put it on the turntable, switched it on, and dropped the needle… right on the song we’d been listening to on the radio, almost perfectly synced up. 

He takes a moment to think.

Stepfather: “Fine, you can use the record player.”

Me: “Thanks, Dad.”

Stepfather: “Not too loud, mind! You could damage the speakers.”

Me: “Yes, Dad.”

Stepfather: “And only decent music, like this. None of that hippie crap.”

Me: “Sure thing, Dad.”

Stepfather: “And not too late. Or too early.”

Me: “Right.”

Stepfather: “And mind the needle! If you wear it out, you’re buying the next one.”

Me: “Of course, Dad. I can do that.”

He finally ran out of stipulations.

Stepfather: “Well… fine!”

I sat back to enjoy the first of many evenings enjoying my records in the living room. And my relationship with my stepfather improved as he began to trust me more.

My little sister was very artistically inclined and very often liked to sketch pictures after being inspired by movies.

One time, we watched the movie “Black Beauty,” and unsurprisingly, afterward, she drew a rudimentary sketch of a horse and taped it to her bedroom door.

She proudly presented her work to us. My mom gasped.

Mom: “Ohhhh, no, no, no!”

Meanwhile, the crude-joke-loving teenage me fell on the floor howling and laughing.

In big crayon lettering at the top of the drawing was the caption, “BLACK BOOTY.”

My uncle has “views” on the topic of tattoos and piercings. Specifically, he believes that they are ugly, gaudy, unnecessary, and that anyone who gets them is a vain idiot. He is very vocal in expressing these views, much to the annoyance of the rest of our family.

I have accepted an offer to attend college at a fairly well-known liberal arts college, which convinces my uncle that I’m going to get “inked up” and come home a hoodlum, etc. He tries to convince my parents that they should bar me from going, but they are both very supportive of me and so ignore his “advice.”

After my first semester, I come home for Thanksgiving and our extended family is all there, including [Uncle]. That leads to this moment in the middle of our living room.

Uncle: “All right, [My Name]. Let’s go check you out.”

Me: “What?”

Uncle: *Standing up* “Come on. I’m going to make sure you’ve been keeping your skin clean.”

Mom: *Walking in* “Excuse you?!”

My uncle starts to launch into his typical rant about tattoos and how “no niece of his” is going to mess herself up with them. My mom turns around, lifts up the back of her shirt, pulls down the hem of her jeans, and reveals a small butterfly tattoo on her lower back, which I (and most of the family, apparently) had no idea was there.

Mom: “You can kiss my a** if you think you are going to go anywhere with my daughter to ‘check her’ for tattoos.”

[Uncle] exploded, ranting and shouting. He ended up hauled out of the house bodily and thrown onto the lawn, giving my dad and younger brother some bruises in the process. After some of the things he said then and in the next couple of weeks, most of our family has cut ties with him, with only our grandma (his mother) still keeping in actual contact with him.