Arvel Joffi

Other than disappointment in the people I might personally know: No. That was them, this is me.

vixstile

Fortunately, my immediate family are all stand up characters, and I think thats the only thing that really matters. My unimmediate family on the other hand, drunks, lowlifes, and just overall dysfunctional people. As for my ancestry, I know absolutely nothing. Which probably means their's nothing to be proud of.

Straight Hate

My family line destroys the Xtian myth of moral decay. From 1000 years ago when they were kicked out of Normandy and fell in with the border-raiding Armstrongs of Scotland, there is nothing but dispicable deeds in my family's past that, for some reason, I take a strange, almost perverse pride in.

openeyes

I don't think there are too many families without skeletons, though some may be worse than others.

I think it's healthier to know of the skeletons, acknowledge them, and go forward with your "good" life (however you interpret "good.")

If for some reason these family skeletons are affecting you ability to live the life you want, then get some professional help.

MzNeko

Actually, having vile ancestors can be fun, under the right circumstances...

If you run into one of those tiresome "My ancestors came over on the Mayflower, blah, blah, blah..." types - telling them that you come from a long line of sheep-raping, baby-eating, violent scum can put a swift halt to that conversation.

frostymama

LOL. No... it isn't affecting me like that. It was just a little sickening to read a book about a man and his friends inflicting such horrendous child abuse on his kids that it was torture... and realizing that it happened in our family. I actually called my grandmother and asked her what she knew about it because it just seemed so unbelievable. I knew our family was disfunctional, but I didn't think it was horror-movie-style disfunctional.

I can deal with the pick axe murder, child brides, war campaigns, feuding, etc. Reading about torturing little kids (with lots of details and names that I recognized) wasn't exactly something I could brush off as 'interesting'.

Strawberry

My mother's side of the family includes Georgian plantation owners (we have copies of the wills in which they left their slaves to their heirs and, in some cases, split up families doing it) and Irish Orange Lodge members (the Irish Protestant version of the KKK, only they lynched Catholics instead of African-Americans).

My mother's family also includes a woman who was hanged at the Salem witchcraft trials.

My dad's family suffered awful religious persecution for 400 years, but at the same time, they became wealty Russian landowners and kicked the shit out of the serfs, who they basically used as sharecropping/slave labor (until they sided with the White Army in the 1918 Revolution and were forced to leave the country or face Stalin-style mass murder).

BigBlue2

My paternal grandfather (who died when I was 16) had a Nazi party membership number of less than 1000, which means he joined before Hitler came to power. He rose through the ranks to become a senior bureaucrat in the Agriculture department, but joined the army when the war broke out. He was injured at Stalingrad (he fell off a horse and injured his shoulder) and was sent home to become a senior administrator in a POW/Slave labour camp. My grandmother ran the adjoining womens camp, and the rest is history.

ju'iblex

i come from a long line of Serb peasants and South Afrikaans bastards. Im ashamed to be assosciated with my SA side, considering its not that far off and i have no interest in being grouped with my grandparents.

but no, i wouldnt be disturbed.

Me and Me

I wouldn't be worried about it unless my Jeffrey Dahmer was one of my relatives. Then I would be worried about skeletons in my closet.