Family History

I am on a 8 hour bus ride from Philadelphia to Boston and with the obscene amount of time I have decided to give you (my fictitious audience) a little background on my family tree. One that is filled to the brim with ethnic confusion

First things first, I am a mutt. My ethnic background is a peculiar combination of Irish (the Richie Clan), Native American (possibly Cherokee), Islander (though which one I cannot say), as well as a sprinkling of other European Countries that no one really cares about. Its as though a group of ethnicities who hated each other came together (most likely through force) to create a baby. A baby of HATE.

In reality, however, none of these backgrounds matter because Mr. Whitey Von White over there is the only person that contributed to my skin color. I may not be pure enough to pass the Third Reich's Eugenics test, but as far as U.S. culture is concerned I am white. I grew up in a white household. Have predominantly white friends. Go to an overwhelmingly white school. Blah, blah, blah, poor me. Boo hoo. My ancestors essentially had intercourse with everybody.

Anyway, my parents grew up in Collinsville, Illinois. It's a dump not worth visiting. I may be a tad biased though because we hate most of our relatives there and only visit for funerals. The last one was for my Grandma Joe, a women I can barely recall anything about. In fact, I think I learned more about her after death than in life. Her passing impacted my father quite hard (she was his mother after all), but I honestly couldn't find two shits to rub together. She was an infectious chain smoker that had, over the course of her lifetime, transformed the walls of her home into a mildewy yellow. When we made the pilgrimage and inevitably began sorting through all the crap that she had accumulated, I learned a lot about her through old photographs, movies, letters, and drunken ramblings, but little of what I know of her is first hand. My parents spent the better part of my life isolating me from our extended family, funerals being the only noteworthy exception.