“Broken Furniture”  sounds like a song I may or may not have heard as an infant.  I did, however, grow up with a band of sisters and brothers whose only instruments were their fists and shouts.  According to our friend, Vic, we lived in a madhouse. This is nonfictional.

Our friend, Vic, tells me stories about this madhouse when I was too young to remember the stories.  Actually, I wasn’t even born before Vic began studying our family values.  Those values included breaking furniture, bloodying noses and saying “Grace” before dinner.  This was followed by more broken furniture, backyard wrestling and sleeping on the lawn if they didn’t settle down.

Vic once asked my father a logical question , wondering if we were poor, “Can’t you afford new furniture?”

Our father responded with equal logic.  “We’ll buy new furniture when they are all gone.  It would be a ridiculous waste of money if we paid for it now.”

Vic couldn’t help but understand and laugh.