My Family
I have arguably (tho not with me) the best family on the face of the Earth. Not a model family, but I never did like models. So, first of all, the individual members of said family.
My one and only sibling is a brother, Ian, A.K.A. to some few people (himself included) "That omniscient, omnipotent guy who's never wrong." He may not always be right, but he's never wrong. Just ask him. He's currently 21 (scary thought) and is living in California, planning on going to Berkley before too long, which should be a good thing. I think he's planning on going into computer programming, but I could be mistaken in that, because I (unlike him) not only am occasionally wrong, but will admit to it *gasp*.
My father is currently farming peaches with his partner, Alan, in a canyon in a desert in southwestern Colorado, teaching a group of ladies there art history once a week, and thinking about (at least he was last I knew) getting a job with an airport selling tickets, so he could meet people and fly free. For years and years he was a professor of Art History at places including the University of Maryland and, more recently, U.C.C.S. (University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, to those of you not familiar with the initials of every school in the world).
And my mother is currently between jobs but thinking (I think) about either writing or teaching, either of which would probably be good. She double majored, way back when, in English and the Classics, and has memorized more poems than I would have believed existed. She's got a phenomenal memory, especially when it has to do with dogshows- I've actually known her to pinpoint the date of a dogshow three years ago when a specific judge put up a specific dog in whatever place. One of her favorite jobs she ever had was teaching English in a maximum security prison, because the inmates looked at everything in totally different ways. Doing Hamlet, she had people empathizing with all the different characters, for example.
And now (drumroll please) the family as a whole.
We are, as these comments may or may not have suggested to you, a wee bit out of the ordinary, family wise. My brother and I grew up on a farm in upstate New York while our parents were going to graduate school in Cornell University, and later in Hyattsville, a suburb of Washington D.C. As well as the usual children's books, we were raised on Amphigorey (by Edward Gorey) which, to those of you not familiar with it, is hilariously funny if you don't find it hideously disgusting. Later, once we were a bit older, when we were read alloud to, it was often P. G. Wodehouse (if you haven't read him, go out, find his books, and read them, they're some of the best literature out there) and J.R.R. Tolkien (if you don't know who that is, you don't deserve to be on my page:p Go away) We all have similarly ... interesting senses of humor (Anybody read Hiaason?) and a wonderful way of looking at the world, which, from all of my conversations with folk outside the clan, is at a slightly different angle than the majority of humanity. I wouldn't say twisted, precisely, but definitely angled. We have several rather unusual customs (whenever somebody mentions looking something up in an Encyclopedia- hey that's one right there: we'll actually do that- one of us will, as often as not, mutter, "Well, it probably has something to do with lockjaw."; when talking about a meal, occasionally one of us will look around very soberly and say in a tone meant to squash all pretensions, "God made the turkey." etc. You get the point).
I'm actually not sure what else to say about my family, except that the world is lucky that, to my knowledge, there are a total of four Peters-Campbells in it. Because if there were more of us, we might just take over the Earth- but only if we thought the current owners weren't running it well.
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