21. Cross-Country Move

“The only reason my family is in California instead of New York is because my dad’s father wanted to follow his mistress (which nobody knew about until he died) to California, so he uprooted his entire family and made them move over here.”

22. Hungarian is a weird language

“All this time my family thought that my weird Hungarian last name meant ‘boat builder.’ Well, recently we were enlightened to learn that the closest meaning is actually ‘man who goes around the village at night and picks up the poop buckets from doorsteps.’”

23. “Dad doesn’t know”

“My dad doesn’t know that I know that I have two younger brothers and a sister.

I’m also trying to look for them.”

24. Mental Institution

“My grandfather had a younger brother who was mentally disabled. He pretty much took care of this brother completely until he was about 18, when he left for college. He came back and the brother had been put in a mental institution for months/years. No one had told my grandfather. My mother only recently found out about him.”

25. Passing

“My dad recently told me a family story of one of his older, distant relatives; we’ll call her Jill. This all happened some 70 years ago, a good 20 years before my father was born. It’s a bit unclear what actually happened, but I’ll try my best to piece it together.

Jill was a ‘plain’ looking girl who was raised on a small, country farm. Being a bit of a quiet tomboy, she didn’t go to school, but took care of the farm’s horses instead.

One day in her teenage years, Jill was in the stables when something spooked one of the horses. It reared up and kicked Jill in the face. Since there was very limited medical surgery, she ended up somewhat disfigured and scarred. She withdrew from much of society and lived solely on the farm as a hermit. Years of isolation pass and one day, Jill vanishes.

Perhaps her immediate family knew, but no extended family were ever told what happened. That is it, until they were notified of her death four years later. You see it turns out, Jill had run away and enlisted in the army. She had fought overseas in WWII, and had been killed.

Now that might not seem like much of a story, but keep in mind that only men fought in WWII. Jill had somehow managed to pose as a man for four years in the army without being detected, and it was her death that gave her away.

Considering the rest of my family history isn’t very exciting, I think it’s a pretty cool story.”