The women on my mother’s side of the family all have huge heads. They are rather petite otherwise, with porcelain skin and huge baby blue eyes roving around not-so-sanely in those parade balloon sized noggins. They are Nordic versions of the Area 51 aliens, but their appearance is actually the least creepy thing about them, as the kooky beliefs and delusional fantasy lands swirling darkly about in those cavernous skulls are vigorously projected out into the real world. One might think that reality would ultimately win out against the assault of mere imagination, and I suppose eventually, with death, it will — but until then, the iron-willed dominance of belief continues to beat reality like a circus monkey wherever these huge heads loom.

One particularly fervent notion projected out of these heads was that the head’s owner was a high class person. Very high class. Perhaps descended from royalty. Maybe even a god … I’m not sure where this belief ended. All I know is that they were way, way better than anyone else, as they drank wine and looked down their noses, speaking condescendingly about the weaker beings with their tiny inferior heads. OK, so they never actually mentioned head size, but I think it must have been implied somehow. There had to be some reason why my grandmother, my mother, and my aunts were so superior to everyone else. To look at them, they were perfectly average and middle class. Searching the family tree, there were no senators, generals, religious leaders, or divine beings. In fact, the family was relentlessly, generation after generation, nothing more than poor farmers from Kentucky.

In search of the source of all this grandiosity, I tracked down all the family stories: the opera singer, the famous actor, the Civil War general. In every case the story was false. The opera singer was a small town stage performer, only very distantly related. The actor was also far from famous, and in this case was related only by marriage, not a blood relation at all. The Civil War general was a captain of no particular distinction, related to my grandfather. The aura of family greatness was conjured out of thin air. I could never deduce when or by whom the story began, but I do remember my grandfather telling me that the first time he met my grandmother he asked her, “Why are you so snooty?” A question that has never been answered.

So as far as I’m concerned my theory of superiority by virtue of having humongous heads is still the front runner. I must admit, my own head is rather large, but it is important to note that the family greatness somehow does not extend to the males of the family. My grandfather was portrayed as an irresponsible drunkard who could never hold a job, forcing my heroic grandmother to single-handedly rescue the family by working 18 hours a day in a coal mine – no wait, that’s right, it was a normal receptionist job at the local telephone company. Imagine my astonishment when one day my father casually contradicted this firmly established family legend, telling me that while my grandfather was a salesman and a bit of a rascal, he always had a job and never drank more than a beer or two. Instead of being the heroic rock of the family, my grandmother was actually a huge drama queen, constantly swooning into the arms of the nearest man when her delicate sensibilities were shocked — until one day when no one caught her and she hit the floor with a thud. After that she managed to stay erect.

Although they were perfectly middle class, my grandmother ceaselessly drummed it into her daughters’ identically huge heads that they were in grave danger of starving and being put on the street. The villain in these endless tales was my happy-go-lucky grandfather, who dismissed my grandmother, and his daughters, with a wave of his hand. He apparently never even responded to the campaign waged against him. From what I could tell, he just didn’t care what my grandmother said or what his daughters believed. When my grandmother would have a meltdown, or unload on him with a steam of invective, he reacted with mild amusement, answering only with “silly” and “nonsense” without ever defending himself. If my grandmother kept it up he would just leave, not the slightest bit perturbed.

I am not sure if they all hated my grandfather because of the stories my grandmother told, or because he refused to take them seriously. He never went along with the “high class” family meme. He liked to tell stories about his father using honey to pick up peas with his knife, then sucking them off with a smack, or pouring his coffee into the saucer to cool it off before slurping it up. He talked about picking cotton as a young man for a dollar a day. Oh the horror, the embarrassment! How ruinous to the imaginary family name! He was down to earth, good humored, and had Teflon self-esteem. He was a snob’s nightmare, perfectly happy with himself, his crossword puzzles, watching baseball on TV, and tending to his prize tomatoes.

I was the only grandson, and I suppose it was rather sexist of him to favor me, but I was just a kid and obliviously happy to have the positive attention. I had no idea, and I’m sure my grandfather had no idea, that his favoritism would make me a target. He bragged on how hard I worked in his yard, how handsome of a lad I was, how I didn’t break a sweat in the summer heat. He remarked on how smart I was and gave me a lot of his treasured old books. He took me to the barber shop. He took me fishing. We would eat lunch together at his favorite cafeteria.

It is hard to know if I was targeted because of this favoritism, or just caught up in the general hatred of all pretty much all men as my mother and her sisters all divorced their husbands almost simultaneously. It might be worth mentioning that my grandmother, in her need for drama, had divorced and remarried my grandfather four times. Anyway, after ridding the men from their lives, things gradually started to change. It started off as “teasing” at family gatherings. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the Teflon self-esteem of my grandfather, and instead of ignoring, dismissing, or chiding them back I was hurt and humiliated. I suppose after decades of frustration with my grandfather, to find weakness in his favorite filled their pumpkin-sized heads with unimaginable glee. The thin veil of teasing was dispensed with and a subtle yet more aggressive mocking and humiliation steamed ahead, as my mother and her sisters laughed together at my expense … all in jest, of course. To my grandmother’s credit, she never joined in the revelry. Like my grandfather, she seemed not to notice. Then again, the more cruel barbs came after my grandparents had gone home, when the wine drinking switched over to Scotch and the laughter became more uncontrolled and words unguarded.

As my grandfather grew old and senile, and my grandmother was increasingly ill, the new crop of Jack-O-Lanterns took over, lit up by alcohol, their jaggedly carved smiles and flashing eyes not bothering to mask their need to feel superior at any cost, and their thirst for revenge. It wasn’t too many years before the large raucous family gatherings were reduced to small petty affairs, as friends and family vanished to safer havens, and I disappeared as the party piñata. Or maybe I am just too sensitive. My mother assures me that it was all just good natured teasing.