Nothing Like Some Family Dysfunction

Have you ever had that intuitive feeling in your gut? You know what I’m talking about ; that feeling that you know something is coming your way, you just weren’t quite sure what it would be. Well, I was always sure of what would happen to me; I knew I would be a big deal. Now, seeing as I wasn’t very popular, was never particularly good at anything and had never really won something in my life (save for that one “participation” medal in elementary, which really is probably even worse than not winning at all), it was long shot to think I would come out on top, but I knew my luck would turn around one day, I just knew it.

When I imagined how I would win, I always had these grandiose visions ; picture me, coming onto the basketball team as an underdog tryout, making the team, becoming the captain midway through the season and leading them to a state championship, securing the love of all my peers and establishing my name in my High School’s sports lore. Or maybe a fire would breakout at my school, and I would heroically run back in to save a bunch of innocent students who needed help getting out and alas running back in one last time to save the girl of my dreams. These illusions of grandeur would consume me, so I decided to make them become reality, at least the first one. Did I end up trying out for my high school basketball team? Absolutely! Did I end up making it? I would’ve had a better chance trying to cook a steak with a flashlight. See the funny thing about my basketball vision is that I forgot I needed one key ingredient to make it all come true; athletic ability. Well, we could always try and make vision number two come true! You know what, scratch that, I’m not trying to make the six o’clock news.

Aside from the imaginative visions produced in the studio known as my mind, I didn’t have much excitement in my life at the moment, although, I did have something to look forward to; my 18th birthday. Aside from the fact that it was my birthday, I had another reason to be excited. You see, every Christmas, my uncle, my mom’s brother to be exact, would buy all his nieces and nephews lottery tickets as a gift. To deliver some quick context as to why this is important, up until the age of 13 I had never really gotten any love from anybody, except for my parents, well maybe not my dad but hey, we’ll save that for the therapy I’ll be taking in couple of years. My two brothers would rag on me, often making me feel like the punching bag they both needed for their boxing adventures, my sister would just ignore me and make fun of me to her friends, my cousins would be turned off by my humour (seriously, what’s wrong with puns?) and my uncles and aunts we’re just nice to me because I guess that was a behaviour prerequisite when you're an adult. Something funny would happen on that fateful Christmas though, something that would skew my views on money and family for the rest of my life. As fate would have it, the lottery ticket my uncle had bought me ended up being a winning one. I remember all the blood in my body rushing to my head, I was enamoured with even more illusions of grandeur. Had I won 30 million? Enough to live out the rest of my life in a tropical location, sitting on the beach and having girls serve me my favourite alcoholic beverage? Not in the slightest. What I did win though, was a cool twenty G’s, as the rappers refer to it nowadays. This money wasn’t “buy a mansion, have slews of girls serving me drinks money” but it was still twenty thousand dollars, and for a thirteen year old kid, that is a lot of money. If you thought I was excited, you should have seen my family.

That day I heard enough “did I ever tell you how much I loved you’s” to last me a lifetime. My brothers, from that day on, instantly became nicer to me, even involving me in their sporting affairs, my sister would come by my room and want to “talk about my feelings”, whatever that means, my father, the man I thought I would never make a connection with in my entire life, was now talking about taking “bonding fishing trips”. FISHING TRIPS! We had never even eaten fish for dinner, now all of a sudden my dad wanted us to go out and “reel in some big ones”. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy the extra attention at first, but a common occurrence quickly dampened the jovialities associated with my “big win”; the question. No matter what we were doing, how happy it seemed we were, the conversation would always come back to one question with my brothers, sister and father, “So? What are you gonna do with the money” they’d ask. Now, I’ve watched enough television and movies to know that they weren't asking out of sheer curiosity. As I learned from then on, no matter how big or small you may come into money, everyone is going to want a piece. The facade of the extra attention I was getting quickly faded and I finally realized what was happening. In the eyes of my relatives, I wasn’t the kid they now learned to love and wanted to be around.No, what they saw when they looked at me was a walking dollar sign, and they all wanted a piece. That is, except for my mom. She was the one who claimed the money I had won and froze it in an account that would only become available to me on my eighteenth birthday.Not once did she ever ask me what I would do with the money. All she ever told me was “You’re smart, I know you’ll figure it out”. She was the breath of fresh air I needed. I guess she knew what I would be going through and wanted to protect me, seeing as I wasn’t of age to handle big sums of money but now, I had no excuse. I’d had five years to think about what I wanted to with the money, and now it was time.

The funny thing about getting older is you never really lose some of your childhood characteristics. What stuck with me throughout my teen years wasn’t my love of trading cards, or my occasional bed-wetting. The forefront characteristic that still greatly drove my life today was my love of grandiose visions. No matter how extreme or unrealistic they seemed, they jolted my life with some much needed excitement. My visions would come in handy once more, sort of a “grand finale” you may say, before I entered the realms of adulthood. I thought about buying a bunch of prop money and burn it in front of them to let it be known I didn't appreciate their attitude, or I could invite them to dinner to a super fancy restaurant and leave right before the bill came to the table so they would have to pay. All these ideas of payback seemed cool, but deep down, I knew it wasn’t. If I did do that, I would essentially be just like them. So, I decided I would give each of them a thousand dollars (except for my mom, I’d be giving her five). I still wanted to be do it in a slick manner so I went to the store, bought every single one of them a beautiful Black Moleskine Notebook, and put the money in the little black book. A couple of days before my birthday, I had announced to my family that on the day of my birth I would let it be known who would be getting how much of my winnings.

The day finally came and I was excited as ever.We circled around the family table and my cake was being brought out. I got up and started tapping my glass with my fork. I wanted to make a toast. I went through a whole spiel about how much I loved each and every one of them and how I had finally decided how to split up my money. As a joke, I told them all I had bought them was a little black book they can journal in and get “more spiritually aware with”. As I stated earlier, my sense of humour was never really appreciated, and my family didn't appreciate it all. In unison my brothers, sister and father got up, started screaming about “how rotten a person” s and “how selfish” I was. They stormed off before we even cut the cake, flinging their little black books my way. My mother, cool as ever, opened her book and found the five grand I had put in there for her. She started to cry, and I proceeded to hug her. This was only a small thing I was doing for the woman who always protected me and had my back when no-one else did. I took the money out of the other books, and gave it to her as well.

The money eventually turned out to be a blessing, and a curse. For one I saw the true colours of my family members, which I’d be lying if I said it didn't break my heart. The great news on the other hand is that it only cost me a thousand dollars per person to weed out their true motives. I don't know about you, but I say that is a sound investment! As a wise man once said “sometimes blood isn't thicker than water, and sometimes family will cross you quicker than strangers”. Well, here’s to family dysfunction. Cheers!