ROOTS

For those of you expecting a treatise on Kunta Kinte, I am sorry to disappoint. Contrary to starting on dusty African soil, my roots took hold in a small country town in lower North Carolina. My great grandmother Lucy Hipps had twelve children: she popped out six, took a five year break, then popped out six more. If I never knew anything else about the woman, that fact alone would be enough for me to give her mad props. Of these, there were ten boys and two girls, and at least until I reached high school, all of them were still living. They, of course, all went on to get married and have their own kids, which, if one does the math, is already an insanely large dose of relatives. My Grampa's one of the original boys and therein lies my tie to this family circus.

The Hipps have a website, and the other day, I made the mistake of asking my mother for her log-in info so I could visit it. It appears the Hipps have taken it upon themselves to singlehandedly repopulate the Western Hemisphere. Every five minutes, there was a newsflash that someone else was having a baby, and while I know the original twelve, their children, and can even name half of the great-grandkids (of which I am one), we are now reaching epic proportions. Names are being flung around the family site like confetti, and only about 25% of them still have Hipps somewhere in the mix. People are marrying Joneses, Grahams, even Yoshinos, and our numbers passed into the hundreds some time ago. Needless to say, I am not yet contributing to this melee, although my brother has already treacherously jumped on the bandwagon by producing what I'm convinced is the world's cutest fat baby (ah BOO BOO), but if we're not careful (and we won't be), the annual Hipps Family Reunion is going to turn into the Hipps Family Conference, with 65% of the participants being under the age of 16. Going to restaurants is comical: Hipps, party of 2,000. Even outside of your standard childbirth, people are divorcing, re-marrying, absorbing pre-fabricated other families, adopting, what have you, and our family tree has rapidly become a family shrub. Add to that the twelve strains of quirky that we've inherited from the original gangstas, get us all together, and it really is a travelling circus, the biggest you've ever seen. We've already started doing in-house variety shows, we put on our own golf tournament (complete with trophies and award ceremony), one of my great uncles is infamous for conducting illegal tours of private property (it's for the children!), and at least two of the brothers have been professional clowns, my Grampa included. EGAD. Taking a stroll through my bloodlines gets weirder every day.