Big Family Fun - In memory of Stuart C. Thatcher

Living in a large family was all I ever knew until I left home. I had no idea why people looked at us so strangely. I really didn't get it when I was younger but I sure learned to deal with it.

My brother Stuart wrote this years ago.

We all love to swim and went to the local Lagoon pool daily. One afternoon we had our plot staked out with the usual barrage of fins, floaties, and balls when up comes this lady, you know the type, every pool's got one. The basic Nora Nosey, Melva Meddler. She was middle-aged, 5'3, with bird legs on a sausage body crammed into a bathing suit one size too small, horned rimmed sunglasses, zinc oxide nose, sunburned shoulders and carrying a diet pop. Well, she looked at us kids, (the white ones) then she looked at Rachel, (she's the one with the perma-tan)  then at Mom...then us...then Mom...then Rachel... then Mom...then us... then Mom again. She made one of those really intelligent statements:
"Hey honey, is that one there..ah ...you know, yours?"
Now, my mother is very quick. She has to be with eleven children. Anyway, mom sort of blushed and looked over the top of her glasses and said, "Oh well, we just have the nicest Oriental milkman."

Ridicule, social prejudice, and misunderstandings are some of the things we faced. Sure I can be spicy and give some quick remarks, I learned that from my Mom but I also learned to have a sense of humor, and I had fun dealing with this kind of thing. In every task, there is an element of fun. I guess we found fun in people ridiculing us.

—Allison Ochs Social Worker M.S.W. , Coach, Expat, Mother of three, Wife with Stuart C. Thatcher