where do i even begin?

It is really difficult to type and eat oreos in a proper manner.  Especially if you're a dunker, which I am.  I have a few kids who are dunkers, too, and one oddball who is the open-the-sandwich-cookie-and scrape-the-cream-out sort.  Clearly got the double recessive genes for that quality.

It's impossible to say which of my qualities are the double recessive, and which are the other sort.  Dominant, right?  The term is dominant?  It's impossible because I have no benchmark.  I was adopted as an infant.  I have no clue who my biological parents are, and that's alright with me; the set that chose me at the baby store are quite enough, thank you kindly.

I grew up in a normal family.  Dad went to work, Mom stayed home, brothers made an early career of being ridiculously annoying because that's what younger brothers do to older sisters, no?  In return, as was normal, I was the bossy older sister, issuing edicts, antagonizing, pointing fingers, and being a general pain in the ass.

We would visit my mother's side of the family on holidays, Christmas mostly.  I never understood why we had to pack up and drive forever and ever away on Christmas.  Why could we not go on Boxing Day?  On Christmas Eve?  Why on Christmas?  We had new toys and got to wear our pajamas for a long time and were having a wonderful time... until the holiday-at-home abruptly ended and we got to spend the rest of the day watching Grandfather get drunk and tell our sweet, codependent Grandmother what a piece of shit she was. 

It wasn't just Grandfather who liked his booze, which made the festivities even more exciting.  For when two or more come together in the name of Jim Beam and in the heat of the moment, tempers will flare.  I never once heard the word 'alcoholic' in my childhood, but I could spot one a mile away before I was ten.

Fortunately for my brothers and me, Christmas came but once a year, and the other side of the family, my father's people, had absolutely no interest in our little family whatsoever.  Their interests were alcohol and fighting with each other, which left no time to plan a shiny, happy, family get-together.  We were spared the additional madness.

Did I know it was madness at the time?  No.  My life was all I knew, and everything was fine.  And normal.  I had no idea that normal was insidious and dangerous; I didn't know the things that could masquerade as normal.