The FOO

I'm surprised no one has come up with this anacronym, FOO, or Family of Origin. Seems appropriate for most of us, foo, as in fooey. Okay, it's phooey, but same thing. Someone once said at a meeting that we can never be fully recovered until we have dealt with our FOO issues. Nuts. We can never be fully recovered, period. And the FOO will always be with me, till my dying breath. Some of it was good. Christmas, for instance, when mother morfed into this Betty Crocker/Martha Stewart clone and baked and decorated and wrapped presents that were piled higher than the tree. They were Depression kids, my folks, and believed that they were doing better by their kids by giving them stuff. Never mind the other 364 days of the year, when tempers seethed and frequently flared up, resulting in bruises and wounds that would bleed and fester well into my fifties. One of the consequences I have been noticing is my competitive instinct. You had to compete, for attention, for appreciation, for the biggest serving of dessert. We played a lot of board games. Talk about murderous. My mother put Risk away forever. My brothers and I nearly killed each other trying to take over the world. Until they moved into a smaller house, my folks had a game table that we all gathered around, with our stash of pennies, nickels and dimes that we all kept hidden somewhere in their house (mine was in one of those L'Eggs eggs) and played poker or Tripoli at Christmas. Lots of shouting. And I noticed that the competitive gene has been transmitted to my kids, too. Well, they too originate from the FOO. Sigh.