Recollections: Jane

    Families!  Mine was (and still is) the most dysfunctional middle-class family in America!  I dare anyone to match their family’s dysfunction against mine.  Ground rules:  Your family has to be White, middle class, gainfully employed and have at least two kids.

     My parents lived in a two-bedroom house and still managed to not speak to each other for over ten years.  “Tell your father to pass the salt.”  The silent treatment perfected!  How the freak did they even do that?  My sister refused to sign my father’s burial consent unless we gave her all his money — even though she hadn’t spoken to my father for seven years.  No one told me when my sister died.  I had to read her obituary nine months later.

     My family managed to raise middle-class dysfunctionality to a fine art!