Family Feud: My family would never make it on the show.

This would be my family on the show.
Still chewing over our responses but never
answering before the buzzer sounds.

by Angela K. Durden
The Most Brilliant Woman in the World

Family Feud. I am of two minds about this show. One: I love it. Steve Harvey is the best host of the show ever. The stage is great. And the families all dress so uptown.

Even the Preggers Sisters manage to match dress colors with Grandma and Brother and Single Sis. 

They all smile and laugh and seem so good-natured and loving and kind. Even if some of them are dumb as bricks, they still make good entertainment, right? Right. Of course, the audience picks the answers, so that is always entertaining to find out what is on the collective whole's mind. 

My second mind says: I hate it — for all the above reasons. 

You see how torn I am. Here is America in all her glory displayed in TV-approved fashion guaranteed to entertain, maybe titillate just a tweensy bit, but never ever offend.  

That is not my family. We wouldn't make it past the application to audition. First, we will not wear matching colors. Our tastes run to the spots, checks, stripes. Business casual? What's that? 

If they were still alive, I could hear Awesome Aunt Number One saying, "They want us to match colors? Oh, for goodness sake. You ever hear of anything so silly?"

Awesome Aunt Number Two would naturally reply, "You are right, Sister. I do not see why we cannot just wear our regular everyday clothes that fit our color pallet. I mean, I could get something pink, but the last time I did that I looked like I was ready for the grave."

Then there would be the uncles. "Awww...hell, no." And that would be that. You would think the cousins would somehow want to have such an adventure, but I can hear them now. 

"I can't stand that long anymore...then there's my prostate..."

"I can't see the board...and there's my blood sugar..."

"Those questions are stupid...who cares?"

"Dress in the same colors? Forget it. Hey, if they want me on the show, they will buy me some new clothes."

That is my father's side of the family. I have four siblings, only one of which is related to my father. But they wouldn't do it, either. 

"What are they trying to pull anyways?"

"Tie? Awww HALEnaw."

"Will they let me wear my knife? No? But I'll wear my dress knife. It ain't got no knicks or dings or grease or pine tar or nothing. "

But let's say we did manage to come to agreement on clothes.

We still wouldn't win. We wouldn't even score. The buzzer would sound before we could even get an answer out and there's a really good reason for that: We are all super smart.

That's right. You heard me say it: We. Are. Super. Smart. We would have several answers that nobody would ever have thought of that, when we said them, the audience would all shut up in amazement that they had not thought of such things. That itself would entail massive conversation further ramping up production costs.

And we are very independent-minded people. That means we don't know how to relate to the masses except in a Socratic fashion, that is, we ask the question then answer it.

Besides, many of us are storytellers. So, let's say a question comes up with four top answers. Okay? And that question is "Name a country that seems to tell other countries what to do." 

This was a real question. The audience's answers were: U.S. (81), Iraq (8), France (6), Russia (3).

Well, already we have a problem with providing a timely answer because the Air Force, Army, and Marines in the family would weigh in and off we would go with the war stories, none of which involved driving a big rig up and down the California cost or smoking marijuana while playing checkers waiting on the trailer to be loaded which is a story a certain ex of mine said his military service was all about.

No, my uncles and aunts were of what Tom Brokow called The Greatest Generation. But there I go. Getting into the storytelling again. Of course, for a writer that is not a bad thing for a reader. But for an audience in front of a live show being taped on a tight schedule with a rabidly strict dress code, it sure is. Let me get back on track. 

What if the question is "Besides chicken, tell me a type of bird that's good to eat"? (Another real question.) Again with the stories of chasing that tough old bird around the dirt yard and then getting interrupted by somebody with the rest of the story. All about how after all that chasing, it was the damn cat that cornered that cock under the porch and ate him all up and how Mama wasn't too worried about it as she made an extra pan of corn bread and the goats sure did output a lot of milk on that day.  

Oh, yeah. And you remember that cat and what he did to your friend's knuckle? You remember. Ol' what's-his-name that lived down the street and his pappy was a school bus driver.

Hahahahaha. Yeah. I remember he also worked in the grocery store as a...

No, he didn't work in the grocery store. That was Jimmy Joe's daddy that worked there and he was a bagger and stocker plus he had a bad knee that gave out on him but only when he took out the groceries for Baby Sister. You remember? He was always fainting dead away and claiming some other such ailment that Baby Sister could "fix."

Oh, yeah. That rotten apple didn't fall from the tree, either. Ol' what's-his-name...

Oh, my God. Do you see how we could not, as a family, answer in time? 

Steve Harvey would be staring at the family with his deadpan eyes, but the audience would be roaring at the stories. But is that the kind of real entertainment they want? 

Hell, no. They want entertainment served up pretty. Color coordinated. Like fast food. Always the same all the time. Guaranteed. 

Damn boring show.

Citizen Journalist.  
Novelist. Author of other stuff. 

Business writer.  
Songwriter.  Protecting creator's copyrights. 

Chimporillas? Paracrows? Hugoats? Never.

by Angela K. Durden 

Within the alphabets of the worlds populations exist all possible expressed thought; yet individual letters, of and by themselves, are null and void. Within dictionaries lie all the words known to mankind, but is there a reason to read one from cover to cover?

Alphabets and dictionaries tell no tales, convey no coherent thought, take us on no journeys, do not entertain, do not make us contemplate, and do not challenge preconceived notions.

Building blocks

However, they are the atoms, bytes, and genes of higher thought. Without them, we would be no more than beasts of the field searching for tidbits of our next meal. Sniffing under rocks and rooting under downed trees. Victims of momentary need. Casualties of sudden storm. Led by hormones.

Some say, and I would not disagree with them, that more humans than not act like those animals with nary a thought of the future. What is a plan? What is a choice? These people do not know.

Yet, humans are the ones who have protected animals. Humans house and feed animals; not the other way around. Humans take animals to veterinarians for treatment. Never does a dog take a human to the doctor and pay its owner’s bill.

Reasonable people see these as self-evident truths: Humans reason, plan, think, question, build, and test. Animals simply exist within the confines of embedded nature.

Some animals can use tools; for instance, chimps get termites out of holes using a stick. Some can communicate with humans, Koko for only one. Cats, dogs, and birds say Mama. From these few examples, connection to the human genome is inferred. “See,” they say, “Tools and language. Strictly human traits. Animals are humans.”

Differences

But there are structural differences that have been maintained through many thousands of generations of animals and humans. There are plenty who study the differences between the two, who recognize the differences, but who will jump through hoops to explain it all away because to accept the thousands of years of genetic stability in humans and animals is to reject evolution and they just cannot bring themselves to do that.

Throughout history humans have had sexual contact with animals. I don't get it and yeah, ewwww. But have you ever seen a hudog or a huchicken or a hugoat? No. For the same reason that between animal species the stable gene path does not make chimporillas or paracrows.

Planet of the Apes will never happen because the human brain is unique among all creation; that isn’t going to change, and it won’t change, and it hasn’t changed in all recorded history.  

Congratulations. You are not an animal.

You, reading this article, are not animal. You are human. You're gene sequence makes it so. Atoms and genes, building blocks of humans, are so powerful they can make billions of absolutely unique individuals. 

Of course, this article does nothing to address the fact that many people act like animals, but personally I think that is insulting to animals who have no choice in how they act.

But you’ll let me know if your cat has an opinion on this, right? (Make sure Cat signs in under its own email addy before commenting. Does Cat have its own credit card? If yes, please let Cat know to buy my books.)

To read more from Angela Durden, visit her site here.