Before I start, I would like to preface this essay with a little explanation of my stance on writing about other people. Many people - okay, more like 2 - have expressed disappointment in that I don't name them in my Confessions of an Improviser. This is due to the fact that I don't know if people in my life would be okay with me mentioning them. Some may wish complete anonymity while others would like to be referred to every other sentence. To err on the side of respect, I mention people by name only if I am sure they are okay with it. That's just the way I feel; I choose to publicize myself over the internet, they probably don't.

On a side note, I choose to talk about myself only on this website. Awhile back, I was asked by a few people on the message board of improvchicago.com to meet them for lunch. While I am okay with this, part of me is bothered that many others know when and where I am going for lunch. I had one person ask me "so how was your lunch" in reference to the message board, and it bothered me that he knew about it. I don't want people to know who I meet for lunch and this is especially true on a message board in a community where gossip travels like lightning. Plus, I don't want people to think I am using the message board as my personal e-mail. Thank God I finally got access to AOL at work.

So it is with great apprehension that I talk about my family. I will try to speak of them and not write anything they themselves would be wary of telling a complete stranger. However, I do write of them because looking at someone's family is a great source of information for learning more about that person.

I am the oldest of two kids. I have a sister who is 2 and 3/4ths years younger than me. My Mom and Dad are still married and so are one set of grandparents. The other set ended when one grandparent died.

My Mom - Rebecca (Becky) Louise Kirberger Forsythe
My mom is amazing. She was born in Minnesota in September of 1950. She has two sisters and two brothers. She is the second oldest child and the oldest sister. My mom was such a klutz as a kid. She was so many stories of how she accidently hurt herself in some manner. I won't go into detail, but will list the injuries:

Wagon handle pushing two front teeth into head
Srape down back from dresser corner after falling off top bunk bed
Nail into foot
Heel ripped open from spokes of bike
Clock landed on her forehead
Allergic reaction from penicillin

...and so on and so on. This sets up an interesting dicotomy. She is tough as hell in dealing with lots of pain, but she is easy to make cry. She loves with all of her heart and she is such a joyous person. People love to talk to my mom. I'm not sure what it is about her that says that it is okay for perfect strangers to talk to her, but she draws them. Maybe they can sense that she is easy to talk to or maybe they can feel her warm spirit. I get a lot of my personality and sense of humor from my mom.

She did work in an office environment before she had my sister and I, but once I was born, she became a homemaker and a housewife. I have the upmost respect for homemakers because watching my mom, I can see that it really is the hardest job in the world, if not the most thankless. While I was going to elementary school she and our neighbor both had florishing babysitting jobs in full gear. What I mean by that is that my mom was paid by other neighborhood mothers to watch their kids once they came home from school until the mothers got off work to pick their kids up. So my mom didn't just raise my sister and I, but she helped to watch over at least 20 other kids. I had a lot of kids to be around growing up and it was fun.

Since my sister and I have left high school, my mom has gotten herself a job at a local high school in the bookkeeping office and then once moving back to Minnesota a job as a bank teller. My mom loves snow men figurines and saving my sister and I's e-mails.

My Dad - Jeffery (Jeff) William Forsythe
My dad was born in Wisconsin in March of 1951 and later moved with this family to Minnesota. He is the oldest of seven kids and has five brothers and one sister. My dad is like the dads of TV of sort. What I mean by this is that growing up, I hardly saw him during the day. He went off to work before I woke up in the morning for school and I usually didn't see him until it was bed time. He provided for our family mostly in a financial manner and on his free time, he would do jobs around the house to beautify it. He used to work for Sears when we all lived in the burbs of Chicago. He was a manager of programmers, if memory serves me right. He moved the family to Florida in 1992 where he and my mom lived until December of 2002 when they moved back to Minnesota.

Since he doesn't really know the specifics of my sister and I - like favorite foods and music and whatnot - he sometimes becomes the butts of our jokes; especially on family vacations. He has a quick temper, which I mirrored in my youth, but he is basically a good person.

My Sister - Amy Louise Forsythe
My sister is such a goof ball and I can say that because I am a goof ball too. She was born in October of 1979 in Illinois. Like me, my sister embodies the paradox of being normal and different at the same time. She definitely was one of the more popular kids in school although to hear her tell it, she was the ambassador of all the cliques in school - that she could be a part of any group but that she wasn't a member of any of them. She makes friends easily and if she ends a friendship, it ends; she has the memory of an elephant and doesn't forget friends who do her wrong. She is a true Scorpio and very stubborn. She gets her personality from her father in many aspects but she has improved on the template in my opinion.

She likes photography and recently went on a road trip across America. She wants to be a special effects make-up artist and it looks like nothing will get in her way.

The Grandparents
The Grandparents are typical Minnesotan people. They raised their kids, sent them on their way, and try their hardest to spoil their grandchildren. My grandparents on my mom's side are still married although they will admit it is mystery how they did it since their interests are different. It looked like a simlar fate was in store for my grandparents on my dad's side. My grandma had battled and beat breast cancer and she seemed to be in great health. Then in 1990 she suffered a stroke and died. I believe she was only 60.

My grandpa has recently got himself a girlfriend, which is a surprise to us all, and he seems to be happy. He is a Snow Bird which means he lives in Florida during the winter and up in Minnesota during the summer. My mom's parents still live in the same house I have ever known them to live in, and they are doing fine. Other bits of info are these: My grandma can't cook to save her life and still smokes. Her husband, my grandfather, is thin as a rail and uses a hearing aide to hear. He loves to tinker with things that are broken around the house and even when he visited my parent's home, he would fix things around their house; he just can't sit still. My other grandfather loves to read history related books and he loves to fish. He owns a boat and takes it regularly out on the Gulf of Mexico.

The Aunts, Uncles, and Cousins
I won't speak about any of them individually since they are the people around me with the most interesting stories and, thus, most deserving of privacy. I will just say that my extended family is huge. On my dad's side of the family, I have six uncles, six aunts (due to marriages), eight cousins and three cousins-in-law. On my mom's side of the family, I have 4 pairs of aunts and uncles and at least 12 cousins. I'm the oldest cousin on my dad's side of the family and one of the middle cousins on my mom's. Most of them live around Minneapolis, MN (where I was born) with some living in Omaha, NE; Charleston, NC; Moorehead, MN (across the Red river is Fargo, ND); and Los Angeles, CA.

It's usually years between the times I see my extended family and that has been the case most of my life. We would travel up to Minnesota for either Thanksgiving and Christmas and would see them then, if at all since some families were elsewhere. Once we moved to Flordia, the vacations up there were less frequent. Sometimes I wonder how my relatives would act if I won the lottery; which ones would be asking me for money and such.

So that's my family. Midwestern, polite, and rife with fun quirks. However, by no means are they crazy - I have met some of my friends' families and they truly can take the blue ribbon when it comes to crazies.

What does this all say about me? Probably a lot more than I care to realize. I leave you do deduce it while I currently go back and visit some more with my relatives from North Carolina, who are in town for Christmas.

P.S. My improv and college friends could be considered my other family. I have a very good network of friends and I relie on them for advice, support, laughs, company, and all the rest of the great things that come out of friendships. I spend most of my free time around improv and I think I have found the most supportive people to surround myself. I won't name them, but chances are they know who they are, and if they are reading this, then Thanks.

P.P.S. The post script was written on January 2, 2002.

P.P.P.S. Edited and revised on July 5, 2003.