Tell us about the black sheep in *your* family's history.

[progmom]

Mine is my great-great-Aunt Bessie. She ran a brothel in Buffalo until she was arrested for shooting a customer.

Her ashes are still in my grandmother's garage.

[merh]

1. My great grandfather and his brother died from drinking horse

linament one cold winter's day when returning from town after buying supplies. Apparently the horse linament and the whiskey were contained in like bottles and they mistook the linament for the whiskey.

My heritage is Polish, btw.

[progmom]

3. wow

that sucks!!!

[maveric]

46. Several of my uncles were mafioso. Dumb ones too!

Always ending up in Walpole (MA-Big House), or the Federal tank.

[henslee]

52. self deleted.

[sniffa]

2. i'd say i'm it

but then you'd have to ignore the generations of pimps, deaLers, bookies, and their counterparts.

[progmom]

4. just because you pee off your balcony?

:shrug:

[no name no slogan]

5. My dad's whole side of the family

...are either drunks or religious fanatics. I was the former until I had a major depressive episode and cleaned myself up.

My great-grandfather (my grandfather's dad on my mom's side) was illegitimate, and used to run for Minneapolis city council back in the 1930s. He was a friend of Hubert H. Humphrey, too. :hi:

[matcom]

6. my Grandfather was shot in a Buffalo brothel

:D

:cry:

[progmom]

8. heh

:rofl:

[Beware the Beast Man]

7. It seems every family has one.

I never met him/her. ;)

[MisterP]

9. great-great-grandfather knifed future in-law and my great-grandfather,

though neither actually got ostracized over it, but we still talk about the rather notorious event

[Lindsay]

10. My grandfather had to leave Pennsylvania

after some sort of troubles in state government. I wish I knew more about the story, but my family was of the "don't air your dirty laundry" sort.

Then there was my Uncle Joe, who used to drive around with a mannequin dressed in a wedding gown in his car....

[jobycom]

11. My favorite is a

lesbian former nun who became a high-ranking officer military officer, and later a professor, and who now travels the world.

When I was about ten she secretely left a copy of Catcher in the Rye and Sidhartha on my dresser. Dangerous books for a serious kid in Mississippi to discover.

[tigereye]

33. now that's a cool aunt!

[GreenPartyVoter]

37. WoW!

[Zuni]

12. My uncle Alex

a raging alcoholic---at one point was living in a car with his ex-wife and her boyfriend. My mother bought him a condo in Pittsburgh and he hasn't even attempted to repay one cent.

Oh, and he stole somewhere around $30,000 from various family members including my grandmother. He used to take her checks and just write himself 1,000$ or 500$ checks after she went out and bought him dinner! She was kind of senile so my mother took over her finances after they found out. The thing is, she would have given him the money if he asked, and he always did but stole extra.

Both my mother and grandmother (RIP) felt bad for him because he has had a very bad life. He has a genius level IQ and is a whiz at anything mathematical but he was badly abused by my grandfather who used to beat the shit out of him and tell him he was worthless and stuff.

[progmom]

13. On the other side of my family...

My great-grandfather had pretty undeniable psychic and healing abilities. It totally freaks my very religious grandmother out, so we're not allowed to talk about it. There's also the matter of a crap load of money that he made that disappeared when he died...but that is also not to be talked about.

[JimmyJazz]

14. Well - that would be ME and you already know stuff about me.

:D

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

15. My mother gave me a tie...

A whole flock of white sheep and one black. I guess that means that, at least as far as Mom is concerned, I am the black sheep in my family.

Historically, though, I had a ancestor who was shot in the back by (we presume) somebody whom he had cheated at cards. Even though he saw the person who shot him and lingered for several days, he wouldn't name the assailant. His logic was, "If I live, I'll kill him myself." He died a couple of days later.

[XemaSab]

16. My step-cousin

Used to deal coke, and he got kicked out of HS. One time he got so angry with my aunt he punched a hole in the wall.

He was the one who kept ME from being the black sheep all through high school, when I got poor grades.

[Trigger Hippie]

17. My great aunt Cam

World War II era nurse, an officer, who married my great uncle, an enlisted man. Very much frowned upon and the military split them up during their tours of duty. She was also the only other one I know of who ever got out of south Louisiana. She moved to Baltimore and had great adventures. She was so cool. She was proud that I had the guts to move away from home too. I wish I knew her better before she passed away.

I'm the black sheep currently of my families. No husband, no kids. Oh, yeah!!

:bounce:

[two gun sid]

18. My father's step-brother is a Baptist minister...

I liked him better when he was a fall-down, knee-walkin' drunk.

[prole_for_peace]

19. my great-grandfather like the look of a young woman in town.

she wasn't interested so, after a failed courtship, he kidnapped her. he kept her a few days so that everyone would think she was "ruined" and then he married her and she became my great-grandmother.

isn't that sweet. :puke:

[progmom]

20. wow.

:wow:

[GreenPartyVoter]

40. Used to happen all the time in the way back when days.

[yvr girl]

21. My family is LITTERED with black sheep

My dad's brother's wife and my dad's sister's husband had an affair. Bit of a scandal. Technically, they're not still part of the family, but I still see them at the occasional wedding etc.

My great-grandfather was a bootlegger - a very successful bootlegger. He hired the US Coastguard to make his deliveries to the States so he wouldn't have to bother evading them. He was quite popular though, so I don't know if he counts as a black sheep.

I have one brother whose whereabouts are unknown. My parents get the occasional call from the police looking for him. He's not violent or anything - just a lost soul.

[progmom]

22. very very interesting

i knew about the brother and the grandfather...
you do have some fascinating family!

[ihaveaquestion]

23. My half sister Michele.

She's a con artist who uses people for as much as she can get from them and then leaves with as much as she can carry. We continually hear about folks she has used up and left in her wake and we've tried to warn some of them before it's too late, but it never does any good. She's very, very good at her con game.

Example: She ran up $25,000 in online gambling debt on my mother's credit card before my mother found out and when confronted about it blew up and kicked my mother out of their shared house. My mother moved in with me as a basket case and it took her two years to recover financially and emotionally.

Last I heard, she lives in Oregon. You've been warned!

[progmom]

26. that's terrible

x(

your poor mom!

[ihaveaquestion]

28. Yep, she was taken in.

She believed that Michele had "reformed." I told her it couldn't happen, but she didn't believe me.

Several of her partners have told us that they stayed with her to try to give her two daughters a stable environment. It seems to have worked. My neices are both gems.

[Lilyhoney]

24. I am.

I am so different from the rest of my family. Life with them was very difficult. Now we have no contact.

[Mrs_Beastman]

25. My sister....

She is waiting in Iowa for the rapture (why Iowa?...I figure because it is so flat she will see the four horseman of the Apocalypse before anyone else)

There are other things, but I'm too embarrassed.

[WeRQ4U]

27. We call my father the "White Sheep of the family"....

Because all the others are messed up.

[djeseru]

29. My father and I.

I've just taken his reputation and run with it...I do have occasional contact with family but I usually avoid them all anyway.

No drinking, no drugs, no police history, just don't fit in with them. The oil-and-water scenario...

[Ekirh]

30. Got a few

of the black sheep for different reasons.

However, for these purposes I'll gow ith my great grandfather. . . Once told my great grandmother he was going out to buy bread. On the way to the grocery store he bumped into some women friends who asked if he wanted to go to Flordia and he said yes. So he went off to Flordia.. didn't even go back home and dissappeared for six months. He would return six months later... with that loaf of bread he promised to bring back.

Edit: Just a few more things about him. He was addicted to gambling.

He would have my Uncles mow the lawn for ten bucks.. and then con them out of it with a gamble thirty seconds later.

He would put five dollar bills in Mouse Traps and dare my uncles to attempt to snatch them before the thing came down. If they didn't get their fingers caught they get a few more bucks... if they got them caught they got nothing.

[seemunkee]

31. Uncle Kenny

My dads little brother. Raging alcoholic, as is most of that side of the family. He ended up in the Navy Brig and Psych ward twice. Never heard the what the first incident was, the second was taking an amphibious assault vehicle for a joy ride in Boston Harbor. He was married and divorced 3 times to the same woman. Last I heard of him he was living in a trailer(not a mobile home, a camper) somewhere in Aurora IL. If you needed to call him you could call the people in the mobile home next door and they would get him.

I have a cousin who last I heard pulled a "Leaving Las Vegas" move. We never heard from him again.

On my mom's side there was a judge that was always talked about as being a pillar of society in Peoria. Later while researching genealogy we found out he was embezzling widow's trust funds that he was in charge. This was around 1910 or so and the local paper said he disguised himself as a Negro so he could sneak out of town.

[amazona]

32. well our black sheep is me

I've been more shot at than shooting though. :-) (DOn't worry, they missed!)

[stpalm]

34. my aunt Linda.

She's not a bad person (no drugs and murder like some of the stories here), but she is the butt of every joke at holiday time. Nobody talks to her anymore because she started to hate us for some unknown reason. One thing she went ballistic over was my dad making fun of this ugly Jesus painting on the side of this old van. I don't even see her at all.... it's weird.

[Shell Beau]

35. This isn't really black sheepish, but

my grandfather was ex-communicated from the Catholic church for refusing to send his children to Catholic school. He wanted them to go to public schools. That is when he decided to go to the Episcopal church where they tended to be more accepting. I think of it more as him standing for what he believed and I am glad he didn't cave in to the pressure of the church.

[GreenPartyVoter]

36. GL will have to make sure I got the details right, but my gg grandfer

came over on the same ship as Carnegie. Carnegie offers him a partnership in his steel business and gggranfer turns him down, as he prefers to go into tin and has already bought the land for it and all.

Gg uncle, granfer's bro, puts up the 5000 acres of land against a gambling debt. The case goes to court and gets tied up. After 100 years my dad sees that the land is given to the state and made into a park.

So on the one hand my family coulda had more money, either by hooking up with Carnegie or going into the tin biz, but on the other hand I might never have existed.. or met my hubby if I had. And we woulda contributed to the pollution level in a big bad way. But instead, I am here, am married and have two amazing little boys, and my family accidentally helped to found a state park.

So life is cool sometimes, ain't it?? :D

[XNASA]

38. My Paternal Grandfather...........

Is unknown to me. Nobody in the family will discuss him.

I don't have his name, so that's something of a mystery as well. What his name was and all.....

[Modem Butterfly]

39. My Uncle Joe went nuts one Xmas

My dad's youngest brother had something of a drug problem. I think it was Xmas 78 or 79 (my brother got a lot of Star Wars stuff), our family staged an intervention just before Xmas. His stash was tossed out and he ended up agreeing to go to rehab after New Years.

Well, that Xmas, there were several neatly wrapped gifts under the tree from Uncle Joe. My grandmother would pull a gift out from under the tree, read off the name and the person would open it in front of all of us (my brother and I were the only grandchildren at the time, so this was semi-feasible). The first few gifts went well, until my grandmother got to one of Uncle Joe's gifts. She gave it to my father, who was sitting next to her. He carefully unwrapped it. It was a giant human turd. My uncle had shit in a box and gift-wrapped it. My grandmother started crying, my dad, Grandpa, and my aunt's husband picked Uncle Joe up by the arms and took him outside. My mom tried to maintain some semblance of calm as she pulled another box out from under the tree. It was to my brother, from Uncle Joe.

I can still see my brother shaking his head HARD. "I'm not opening it. Nu-UH! NOT ME!"

Of course, it was a Star Wars thing for my brother, but my mother had to apply a bit of spankology to actually get him to open the damn thing.

Uncle Joe was at rehab for six months, and eventually got his act together, BTW. Now, nearly 30 years later, we can joke about it. But it sure wasn't funny at the time!

[Taverner]

41. Hmmmmm well on my dads side, my great granduncle's family

Runs a Fundie Christian Book Empire. Pretty much 70% of all Fundie Christian Textbooks come from them.

I would consider that black sheepish, even though most would not.

On the more traditional side, my Cousin was a merit scholar at Davis. Engaged to a beautiful pre-med student. Somehow got off track, moved into the woods, picked up a meth addiction, and comes down every so often to mooch off us.

It's sad too, because he is a really nice guy - just suffers from very low self esteem.

[xmas74]

42. Since my family is full of fundies and evangelicals

(and yes, they are waiting for the rapture) most would say that it's me since I'm a single mom and very liberal. Personally, I think it's my great grandfather. He was a harmonica player in vaudeville and considered to be pretty good. We have a few bills w/ his stage name on them.

[trackfan]

43. My aunt ran numbers for Sam Giancana

[u4ic]

44. There's a few...

My uncle, who's a conspiracy nutjob/anarchist, even at 79...people in his neighbourhood literally hide when he comes around...he's always preaching his bizarre idea du jour. He thinks the Mounties have been bugging his phone since the 70's, and considering the kind of company he keeps, I wouldn't be surprised. Mind you, I stopped listening to him when he thought the Russians were controlling the weather. His equally interesting wife (who's very sweet, just a sandwich short of a picnic) used to think someone was breaking into their home and stealing her dryer sheets. :shrug:

My great grandmother left her husband and kids to take up with the town drunk/child molester. This would have been around 1911-13 or so, and it must have been a big scandal in rural Saskatchewan. The area was pretty much exclusively (very religious)Eastern European immigrants.

Just thinking about my nephew gets me in an awful state...the little bugger (well, he's 21) has been screwing my dad out of money for years, but my dad won't hear the truth about him. The latest escapade of his was when he stuck my dad as a co-signer for his cell phone, ran up the bill to $800, then changed the account address to my sister's (his aunt's, whom he hates), and then the collection agency came after my dad when they couldn't get a hold of the little fucker.

He hasn't been able to see the truth for years...the day after my mom died (coincidentally, exactly 8 years ago), when he was 13, he started asking how much my mom was worth, if she had life insurance, who it went to, etc. Then he stole his mother's medication and gave it to his cousins, and they were all drugged at her funeral. Of course, it wasn't HIS fault :eyes: it must have been the cousins, for one was a year older and should have know better. According to my father.

Needless to say, the only fan in this family he has is my father. Everyone else loathes him.

[foreigncorrespondent]

45. It would be me on all counts. LOL

In my immediate family (the family I grew up with; ie: my mum and sister) I am defenately the black sheep. Always wagged school, ran away from home way to many times to count, and several other non mentionable things. LOL

In my larger family (grandparents both sides, cousins, etc) It is my mum, my sister, and me. My mum's father is my grandmothers brother. No! No incest happened. He got a woman preggers while married to someone else. My great grandmother wanted to keep my mum in the family so she talked the grandparents I knew into adopting my mum. So my sister and I grew up believing our grandfather was our uncle.

So with that, the family looks at us as outsiders, because we were the bastard relations of a family member who wasn't too popular.

And my father isn't worth mentioning simply because he disowned me when I came out.

[BikeWriter]

47. Me. I kept respectable jobs, but I rode Harleys, had a beard...

long hair, and partied hearty when between wives.

[sundog]

48. me

no doubt, and i am proud of it

:7

[Ramsey]

49. My grandmother's maiden name was Arnold

We are descendants of Benedict Arnold, kind of the ultimate black sheep. I guess you already know about him.

[name not needed]

50. My 2nd cousin, Danny

Last I heard, he was in prison after getting busted for selling crack.

[Jamastiene]

51. I think it's me.

Most of my family is ultra conservative and most are con artists, thieves, wife beaters, and incredibly grumpy most of the time (which is something I have noticed most conservatives are). I'm exactly opposite them. I'm the only liberal in my family I think ever. I AM the black sheep of my family including those in history, so far.

[henslee]

53. My dad was such a punk, when he was dating my mom,

her dad used to give him money and lend him the car, hoping to entice him to date other girls while she was away.