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There’s no such thing as a perfect family, mainly because families tend to be made up of humans. Every family has at least a little bit of dysfunction to it. But a little bit of dysfunction can be tolerated, and sometimes even overcome.
But all bets are off when people start shooting at one another!
In her book entitled The Liar’s Club, literary professor Mary Karr recounts some of the shenanigans she endured from her family (and family friends) during her upbringing in East Texas. She opens her book with a simple illustration of just how bad it could be at times.
Not long before my mother died, the tile guy redoing her kitchen pried from the wall a tile with an unlikely round hole in it. He sat back on his knees and held the tile up so the sun through aged yellow curtains seemed to pierce the hole like a laser. He winked at my sister Lecia and me before turning to my gray-haired mother, now bent over her copy of Marcus Aurelius and a bowl of sinus-opening chili, and quipped, “Now Miss Karr, this looks like a bullet hole.”
Lecia didn’t miss a beat, saying, “Mother, isn’t that where you shot at daddy?”
And Mother squinted up, slid her glasses down her patrician-looking nose and said, very blasé, “No, that’s where I shot at Larry.” She wheeled to point at another wall, adding, “Over there’s where I shot at your daddy.”
It’s definitely best to not shoot at family members. But if you must, by all means remember where you did it!
Resource’s Origin:
The Liar’s Club by Mary Karr. Penguin Books, 2005, Page 1.
Topics Illustrated Include:
Argument
Danger
Dysfunction
Family
Father
Fighting
Husband
Marriage
Men
Mom
Risk
Threat
Violence
Wife
Women
(Resource cataloged by David R Smith)
