I recently found out that I have a cousin in prison in California on death row. He stabbed a woman, and apparently it was quite brutal. My mother dropped that tidbit recently on a phone call.

I just learned that “random dad lore” is a meme from my oldest son. He was talking about an iPod touch we had when he was very little: “oh yeah, that was a gift for placing 8th or something in a national trivia competition before you were born.” He was like “whaaaat?”

Then he told me about it being a thing. Which, to be fair I think has always been a thing, it just wasn’t codified as a “meme” before.

Now I find myself looking for opportunities to drop weird facts about mom and dad.

Found out from my mom randomly that my greatx2 grandparents owned a plantation in Jamaica. She didn’t say it but I figure there’s a 90% chance that someone in my family owned slaves before it was banned by the British Empire.

My more recent American immigrant family lost all their plantation money in the Great Depression (owned).

Jesus Christ, Dad

one of the craziest¹ things my dad told me was the story of how he had a cousin who he had a strong feeling was intersex, but nobody in the family ever talked about it. this person was raised as a boy and lived as a man as an adult, but had unusually wide hips, noticeable gynecomastia, barely any facial hair, and retained their high pitched voice. some time when they were in their early twenties in the 70s, they moved to NYC (they were able to do this because they were from the rich side of the family² that could basically buy a visa), and nobody ever heard from them again. he just randomly told this story on a family trip to my parents’ home country some years ago. sometimes I remember it and it makes me think about the hypotheses that being trans or intersex has a genetic basis.

Drinking beers with my dad at his vacation house and he just randomly drops…

what is it about boomers and being in mode that makes them spill all kinds of tea?

¹not in the sense that I’m shocked this was a thing, rather that I would have never expected my dad to talk about something like this

²another crazy thing I would never have expected from hearing how my dad grew up and seeing how my relatives who are still there live

I recently learned I have a great aunt who’s 98 years old. Not really crazy or anything I just wanted to share it.

on a trip to the tiny “town” (an intersection abandoned after a new state highway was built in the 60s) my bio father was from, he told me that his own father (who died when my father was like 6-7) had a brother and that the larger part of the family (my last name is crazy common in the US and in this area, like every 5th person had the name) was the part of the family this brother belonged to. that the brothers had some kind of falling out, because this mysterious brother was purported to have made a pact with the devil and used it to become rich. and that was why we had no family connection or real capacity to trade on our name in the area. not that there was much to trade on that I can tell.

this was all information told like 3rd hand to my father, the irony being that pretty much everybody in this breakaway faction I belonged to turned out to be their own kind of villains and I don’t communicate with any of them, because they’re generally backwards ass chuds, unpleasant to be around, and frequently caught lying about shit.

Yeah there’s going to be something like that in the future for my kid

My dad spent most of my childhood telling me and my brother some of his weird stories, so I don’t really get surprised by “lore-dumps” anymore. Usually he would point to various scars on his body and tell the story of he got them. The stories had an interesting effect though, because both me and my brother grew up to be more careful than most of our peers, which I think was the intended effect. It does also mean that I don’t really have anything interesting to tell my kids when they get older, so for now I plan on just making them talk to the cool people in my family.