I swear I'm adopted
 

That's how I feel sometimes anyway. I like camping, hiking, kayaking and riding bicycles. Their idea of the great outdoors is spending the day in an open air shopping mall. I like old cars and bikes because I feel, "they don't make 'em like they used to". My brothers won't buy anything w/o a window sticker and a 3/36 warranty. I'm the tallest of the four of us at 5'8" but I wear size 11 shoes and 46 regular suits. My siblings' shoe sizes range from 7 to 9 and all are skinny minis - typical Filipino/Chinese fellas. My parents must have laced my milk formula with steroids.

Anyway, I have a 30 year old house that requires some fixing. I bought it when the market was down at a very good price so I still have lots of equity even in this recession. My siblings, however, all have newer homes and as a result, they're all underwater or very near it. Back when housing was hot and scarce, they took turns telling me to stop being so cheap, sell my old house and use my equity to buy a new home. Man am I glad I didn't succumb.

How could I be so different from these guys? I swear if we didn't resemble each other so much, I'd get a DNA test.

Anyone else in the same situation?

My brother and I worked together (sort of) at the same restaurant for a year. he was the day chef, I was the garde manger at night. very little overlap but both day and night wait staff knew us both well.

One night he's filling in for the chef and it came out that we were brothers. Even after producing licenses with our last name -- Budka is pretty rare -- the night staff thought it was a practical joke and didn't believe it. We are that different in personality.

Like you, I'm very different from all of my family.

The American Dream is what you make it. For some, it is more about what everybody else is doing.

Yup. My parents doing like sports, are anti-alcohol, aren't very social, don't like being outside, don't have any post-HS education, and are fairly complacent and unmotivated people. My brother is much like them, he lives for movies and video games.

I love sports, enjoy a good drink, am outgoing with quite a few friends, spend every second outside that I can, have an engineering degree, and am a very motivated driven person. There are other differences, but they are more difficult to describe. My wife has often asked me how I am such the opposite of them. My only answer is that I spent a LOT of time with my grandfather as a child, who was constantly taking me to games, races, flying, and to a variety of social events. He's a business owner that works 50-60 hrs/wk, even at 79. I'm much more like him than I am my own father. The only parallels I can really draw between myself and my dad is that we are both DIY types, and in his younger years he was a pretty big car guy (not anymore unfortunately).

Sadly, I'm much more like my in-laws than the family that I'm actually related to.

I doubt you guys are adopted.

Jews have this thing, if the mother is Jewish then the children are Jewish. We KNOW who the mother is, the father, not always.

My cousins family has always fascinated me with the differences of the kids. The oldest is a female who is 5.2 with dark brown hair and very religious conservitive. She lives on a ranch near Oologah, Oklahoma.

The second child is a male redhead that is 6.4 inches and so liberal he makes Peloski look like Ronald Regan. He lives in Boulder Colorado.

The third kid is a 5.5 blonde that is fairly normal and lives in Enid Oklahoma. No one would pick them out as siblings. Knowing the parents there is no doubt about it.

If you had been to some of my family gatherings, you would know why sometimes I wish I was..:eek:

Yes but I'm working on that. I'm built like an old time cigarette vending mchine.

Mother won't own up to the fact that I am hers...she says I was a curse upon her that was left by the Gypsies.

Do you wear pinstripes? Use words like "dees, deems and dose? Carry a .45 revolver? Wear fedoras? :D

Dont sweat it buddy. I have 5 kids and they're all different.

Maybe you're the 'only' full blooded kid?
Prolly heard it before? ha, ha.