The Chicken Family: Sort of like The Partridge Family, but with less talent and more husbands

 

I’ve told you stories about my family but I’ve never explained my family. This is because that’s complicated. But I’m feeling expansive tonight so what the heck, here goes. In short, it’s a big, messy, beautiful love story.

Let’s ease into it with this also familiar story line…

Here’s the story of a lovely lady

Who was bringing up three very lovely girls (and two boys)

All of them liked to fish and play cards like their mother

The youngest one was Mike

And here’s the story of a man named Butter

Who met the woman and her kids and fell in love

So they married and had my brother and became a happy family

(and here, folks, is where our story takes a hard left)

Until I showed up a few years later and ruined it for everyone

I hear I was a handful

First came divorce and then my father took my brother and me

To live with his Aunt who was about his age, don’t ask, it’s complicated

Who introduced him to another very lovely lady

Which is how I got my stepmom

My dad and she had three more kids, which made me almost the oldest

Except when I visited my mom and siblings

Where I metamorphosed into the baby (Gotta love me)

And that is why I often feel out of place

Because you can’t be almost oldest and simultaneously the youngest and be normal

Am I the bossy one, the spoiled one, the peacemaker?

How would I know?

I’m birth-order confused.

Then again, it’s sort of my super power. I’m highly adaptable.

I almost forgot to mention Tony, another lovely fellow

Who married my mom and become our Stepdad

It was a match made in heaven or at least the VFW

And finally we all lived happily ever after

Tony couldn’t have kids

But I forgot about the other father. The first father of this story.

He got married again, too, to Hazel

Another very lovely lady

And they had three lovely kids

This is crazy isn’t it?

It gets crazier.

Because my mother and Hazel, they became best friends

And that’s how I grew up with, essentially, 12 siblings, three fathers and three mothers, a bunch of German shepherds, a few generations of cats, and other assorted animals

Of course, three of those siblings were not actually related to me, it just seemed that way

It was siblinghood by proximity

Until I went through puberty and decided I liked one of them

Like “LIKE” liked. So we went out.

It didn’t last long.

But I had you going there for a minute, didn’t I?

And now you understand me

Chicken out