I need a new broom.

My father's uncle married my mother's aunt. It's not as incestuous as it sounds. The point is, they've almost always known each other, and - perhaps most integral to this tale - their families always knew each other.

My mother's mother had three sisters.

My dad's mother had two brothers.

One of my mother's mother's sisters married one of my father's mother's brothers. And thus, a dynasty was born. A dynasty of crazy.

It was over a year ago that my father locked himself out of the house one morning. He was on the porch, in his underwear, smoking a cigarette. The sun hadn't yet come up and he was going to get his pants out of the dryer. (At this point, I feel like I know too much, solely because I've had to mention my father out of his pants.) Somehow, he got locked out.

He sat on the porch for around 5 hours until his coworkers came to the house to find him, expecting him to be dead, I imagine. At the time, my mother and I were visiting her mother (Nana, the cat-hater).

When we got word that my father had been sitting, in his underwear, on the porch, with temperatures in the low 40s, we were a) glad he was alive and b) concerned. Much talk was had about how someone gets locked out on the porch. How couldn't he get back in? Why didn't he check the door? Who ever heard of such a thing?

And then, one of my mother's sisters pipes up: Wasn't there anything on the porch he could have used to break back into the house?

My mother says: No. We have some chairs, our washing machine and dryer, and maybe a broom.

Silence for a few moments while we all absorb that mental image. And then, from Nana: I need a new broom.