How my Family Multiplies

              My parents met on the one day that they had anything in common. They've been drifting apart ever since. This drift has included almost 40 years of marriage, 7 children, and 12 grandchildren...and separate residences and illicit undertakings on the part of my father. While we all agree that this is not the best of situations, we kids have nonetheless responded to it by, well, laughing about it. That's just how we deal with things. So, for instance, when my father would take to the road for several days, without contacting us (including my mom), and this road included a small town some 30 miles away, where he would stay overnight (with whom, we never asked), we concocted an elaborate tale in which he was the mayor of the town. I think we may have even told him about it, although we may not have. Our jokes (and elaborate tales) have no real, practical purpose. They are for our amusement, and can actually get pretty ghoulish. But it's how we deal with things.
         Pretty much anything is fodder for us, and many of the tales have given rise to characters who've been with us for years...and years. One of my sisters and I have a running joke where we are heavy-set women who wear ironed tweety-bird sweatshirts or t-shirts and go to garage sales. We're really good at bargaining and have shrewd eyes and small town accents. And then there's William, an eternally pre-pubescent boy with the unfortunate combination of a hair lip and buckteeth. William takes over one of my other sisters on occasion, sometimes just for laughs, but in recent years, also when she's under duress. There's also an Asian named Rally (Larry) who my younger brother invokes; he answers the phone by saying, "herro" and then asks if yus yus chin is around. Rally was born when said brother entered grad school. And there's a man named Rick, also with a hairlip-- and a tapeworm-- who lives with his sister Tammy and is channelled by myself and another sibling. We actually wrote a pretty decent short story about him as the deranged leader of an uprising among employees at a local convenient store where, of course, my sister was, at one point, resentfully employed. Again, that need to deal with adversity by laughing at it, or something.
        I really don't have anything philosophical to tie into this post here. And I'm not sure why my family has so many characters. But I will say that they're almost like other family members: I'll catch a glimpse of William, evidenced by his hairlip and buckteeth, as my sister turns her head away from an awkward conversation with someone, or I'll answer my phone to Rally shouting, "herro", or Rick saying "hey" (his trademark salutation). Sometimes they all come out at once, like when my poor mother tries to have a serious family meeting. Suddenly, her 7 children are no longer sitting in front of her, having been replaced by  a motley crew of defense mechanisms.