If last year's `self' fad has you minus your family, don't be `out of it'. We'll ship you the family of your choice. How about it, trendsetters? Which will be `your family' for the upcoming season?
1. Super-Involved Family
Contains
enough members for a standing committee or Board
of Directors.
Knows group dynamics, has leadership traits and managerial skills. Can live on TV dinners, vending machine food, and the kindness of the neighbors. Needs no contact with each other — only stimulation from outside sources.
Comes complete with degrees in management, enough clean clothes to last a fiscal year, a compulsion to succeed, and an empty family photo album.
2. Non-Involved Family
Contains
as many members as you have chairs in your TV room.
Knows the fall program schedules and movie listings by heart. Can view violence, hunger, war, mugging, and miscellaneous other horrors without being affected. Has committed to memory phrases like `they're all alike,' `up by their bootstraps,' `what's the use,' `nobody helped me,' `why should I,' `let `em work for it like I did,' etc.
Comes complete with fogged eyes, deaf ears, shrugging shoulders, and no heart.
3. Religious Family
Contains
enough members to form a prayer circle.
Members have warm hands and sincere eyes.
Knows how to heal, discern, and pray loud enough to be heard in an auditorium. When crisis occurs, knows just how long to pray before situation corrects.
Comes complete with simple clothing for meetings and threadbare Bibles.
4. Relaxed-Easygoing Family
Contains
who knows how many members — they come and
go and include neighbors, friends, etc.
Knows how to fend for itself, walks through obstacle courses and lives for weeks surrounded by dirty clothes, dishes, and family members. Makes no demands on each other and needs nothing (like vacuum cleaners, mops, lawn mowers, etc.). Has strong instincts where not to sit (because the peanut butter and jelly sandwich is there), where not to walk (because the dog `walks' there), where not to sleep (because the hedge trimmer and last seven years of newspapers are piled there).
Comes complete with names and addresses of people who will take it in, a block of accepting neighbors, and a book full of justifications for handling guilt.
5. Positive-Thinking Family
Contains
as many members as God wants it to have.
Knows all banner sayings and verses from greeting cards. Faces all crises with an accepting attitude. Has appropriate cliche ready for every occasion. Never feels depressed or bitter. Meets all disappointments and tragedies, both its and yours, with the `Will of God' speech.
Comes complete with hidden doubts, personal agonizing fears, private despair, no intimate relationship or sincere friendships, and a rude awakening.
6. Museum Family
Contains
a manageable number of members who do not
touch anything.
Knows nothing except the blueprint of the house, the inviolate rules for each room, and names of other people in the family. Each member speaks when spoken to and can double as a house plant. Has no `messy' possessions and will not ask permission to do anything that will upset the order of the house — like eat a cookie in the den.
Comes complete with furniture encased in plastic, little individual hand-carved bathroom soaps, immaculate room corners, and a sterilization unit large enough to hold a full-size person.
7. Traditional Family
Contains
a tasteful number of members.
Knows all the protocol surrounding a shower, wedding, formal dinner, and miscellaneous other traditions of family, church, and society.
Comes complete with proper clothes for all occasions and the appropriate conversation and emotions for every situation. Please state your ethnic origin so family can come equipped with appropriate customs and language. Caution: if you plan on growing, do not order this family as it remains the same year in and year out and cannot or will not adjust.
8. Showboat Family
Contains as many members as the size of your trophy chest will allow. You can select either a team or a combination of gymnasts, football stars, pianists, artists, swimmers, singers, chess players, etc.Knows how to WIN WIN WIN!!!! But can also pretend to be humble and surprised. Prepared to perform instantly.
Comes complete with touching acceptance speech which includes all the `little people' schtich, an `aw, gee whiz, it wasn't nothin' shuffle', and a list of twenty-five accusations of foul in case the other guy wins.
9. Perfect Family
Contains
4.3 members, which grows or decreases according
to the latest statistic.
Knows all the rules for living according to the authorities' suggestions and guidelines. Members brush their teeth three times a day, are early to bed and early to rise, worship one day a week, pass through emotional stages of development at exactly the right time in just the right way, get excellent grades, eat according to the basic foods groups, weigh in at the exact amount for their perfect height and frame, need no glasses, have no cavities, speak correct English and respect authority.
Comes complete with computer processing units that plug into their brains to feed them the latest data and make their next choice.