I had a pretty fucked up childhood and hadn't spoken to most of my family since 12-13 aside from funerals. My wife got an invite to the family Christmas party of Facebook and decided it would be good to go. The night before my mom called and told me that one of my uncles was trying find my other uncle so he could kill him, which is pretty par for the course.

We go to this Christmas party, I'm nervous and playing out all the ways it could go horribly wrong. What do you know, no one is drunk, there's games for the kids, almost everyone there got gifts for my son and we even got gifts for our second on the way. Not a single altercation that I saw, not even a casual "fuck you". All of the alcoholic, mentally ill, rage filled relatives that I remember are now old, properly medicated and mostly sober.

I felt like I was in the twilight zone. My wife came up to me at one point and said everyone's so nice especially that guy and I had to tell her he once beat the shit out of me with a bat, breaking my leg and cut my shoes up with a knife all because I left them in the middle of the floor and he tripped over them.

It was absolutely wild but not in the way I thought it would be.