Growing Up Gosseck

Ever look at your family and think that you had to have been adopted??

There is no other way for this to make sense. Sure we have a few of the same facial features, but does anyone have a paternity test available?

I need concrete evidence that I was not switched at birth.?

Sure, I have my father's nose and chin, I have my mother’s fair skin and soft features. Could all of that be a trick of lighting?

Stranger things have happened.

The resemblance between my siblings and I is obvious, but quite possibly we are all from a different branch of the gene pool.?

How can 5 people of the same stature be so opposite? Is there a Harvard study about this? I am sure there has to be.?

An experiment has gone wrong. Was I part of a secret government project to see what the effects of being raised by wolves would turn out like??

Like giving a family of gorillas a human baby to see if it would develop ape-like tendencies.

It’s the only explanation. It would explain my constant need to pound my chest, piss in nature frequently, and misinterpret sign language as hostility.?

Ooooh ooo! Aaaa! Ahhh!?

I swear I can peel a banana with my skeletal-like feet. Put me around a few trees and up I go.?

Aaaaa! Aah! Ooo! Ooo!?

Watch out, or I will start flinging my feces at you.?

All kidding aside, I wonder about it.?

Granted, I have my love of books from my mother. All my earliest memories of her are with her nose in a Harlequin romance novel. My Dad’s obsessive newspaper reading.?

I even scratch my ass just like my ole man did.

My siblings and I all grew up in the same urban jungle. There were times we picked bugs off of each other. We didn’t eat them, since we were trained better than that.?

It’s just that I can’t come up with a more logical conclusion.?

It’s that, or my family is secretly a band of gypsies, tramps, and thieves, and they stole me from the more well-to-do family in town. Did my mother conjure up a gypsy potion and the only payment was a male son to raise as her own??

A redo after the first two went horribly wrong.?

Is this why I am so good at storytelling? Have I been brainwashed in the ways of the gypsy coven?

“Place a penny in my hat and come sit at my feet as I tell you a tale of intrigue and love.”?

Or maybe I crash-landed on this planet from a different galaxy.?

Good ole Bob and Judy were heading home one night from the local A&P and found a baby on the side of the road. The spaceship I arrived in was broken and damaged.??

Scared that I would end up in some underground laboratory, they decided to raise me as their own. It wasn’t until years later that they realized that I had no superpowers and now they were just stuck with another mouth to feed.?

Should have just kept driving. Jokes on you good samaritans.?

My family is without a doubt, some of the strangest people I have ever come across. At first, I thought most of what we did as a family was normal.

That was until I finally figured out what normal was. It was all downhill from there.?

I shouldn’t be too hard on the people who taught me strength, loyalty, empathy, compassion, and a whole host of bad habits too long to list.?

If it wasn’t for these asshats, I would probably be locked up somewhere with an aluminum hat and an invisible pet named Stanley.?

Each one of them is the bane of my existence and the driving force inside of me.?

They looked at this fragile little boy and gave a part of themselves to me. Nurtured my growth. Tormented my life with their smothering love.?

And did their best with the resources that were available to them.?

My nervous tics, my larger-than-life vocabulary, my obsessive behavior, and my constant need to be loud stems from a family that cares too much. They look the other way at my odd behavior.?

They hug me when I stink, and laugh when I fart.?

They listen to my stories with the faintest interest because they have all sat through one of my thousand and one ideas of how I think the world works.

And they still let me repeat myself.?

There is not a moment when they will stop what they are doing to hear about a new book that I read. And how it could change their lives.

They will nod, knowing full well that the closest they will ever come to my passion for books is dropping me off at the library.?

So if you have that paternity test, I don’t think I need it anymore. What will it confirm? That I am just as cat-shit crazy as the lot of them.

We might all be like a family of gorillas in an exhibit at the zoo on a school field trip, but they are my troop.?

Oooo! Oooo! Oooh! Ahhh! Aaaaa! AAAAAH! Oooo!??

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