黑羊和神秘的鮑勃叔叔

I’m an English teacher working in Russia， and for some reason I really don’t like that classroom topic “Talk about Your Family.” Perhaps it’s because everyone studied English from the same book at school. So all the students say: “My family consists of five members. Me， my mother， my father， my brother and my dog.” And so on. As if all families are exactly the same.

It’s such a shame， because our families are unique. All families have their stories， their dramas， their private jokes， nicknames and phrases. They’re the place where our personalities were made. How often have you heard someone with young children complain “Oh， no， I think I’m turning into my parents”?

The other day I found myself turning into one of my grandparents. I was trying to get my daughter (one year and eight months old) to eat her dinner and I said: “That’ll make your hair curl.” Now I don’t think that green vegetables give you curly hair， or even that curly hair is a great thing to have. It’s just a phrase I heard from my granddad a hundred times when I was small. It had stayed in my mind， half-forgotten， until the time I could use it myself. I wonder if he heard it from his own parents? How many other old-fashioned phrases like this stay inside families， when the rest of the world has forgotten them?

Shaking the Family Tree

Talk about your family? “Well…they’re just there.” we say. Our families are so ordinary to us that at times we think they’re boring. But this is far from the truth. Families are the most exotic things on earth. If you dig enough in your own family， you’re sure to come up with all the stuff you could want for a great novel. Surprising characters， and dramatic or funny stories passed down for generations. As 1)genealogists like to say， “Shake your family tree—and watch the nuts fall out.”

My mother started tracing our family tree a few years ago， not expecting to get far. But， digging in old records and libraries， she got back 300 years. She turned up old stories and a few mysteries. What happened to the big family farm? Where did the family fortune go in the 1870s? More to the point—where is it now?

I’m the traveller in my family， and I like to think I got it from a great-grandfather on my dad’s side. He was an adventurous soul. My two favourite family 2)heirlooms are a photo of him on a horse in a desert landscape (1897 in 3)Patagonia) and a postcard home from Portugal complaining that his boat was late because of the revolution in 4)Lisbon. “Dreadful business， they seem to have arrested the King，” he says. If you look at your family， you open a window in the past.

History in Miniature

Start someone talking about their family stories and they might never stop. You’ll find the whole history of your country there， too. When my mother， still putting the family tree together， asked me for a few names from my Russian wife’s family， my wife got on the phone to her own mother just to check a name or two. But they were still talking an hour later， and she’d filled five pages of A4 paper. And so I was introduced to: someone who lived through the siege of

5)Leningrad (but forgot how to read in the process)， a high official in the Communist Party and some rich relations who used to go to Switzerland for their holidays before the revolution. There was also a black sheep of the family (or “white crow” as they say in Russian) who left his wife and children and disappeared in the Civil War—though nobody in the family seemed impossibly exotic to me.

Who Wears the Trousers?

English is rich in idioms to talk about family life. We’ve mentioned the black sheep of the family—that’s someone who didn’t fit in， or caused a family scandal. If you’re loyal to your family， you can say “blood is thicker than water” or “keep it in the family”.

If you share a talent with another family member， you can say “it runs in the family.” You might have your father’s eyes or your

mother’s nose. If you’re like one of your parents， you can say “l(fā)ike father， like son” or you can be “a chip off the old block.”

Who wears the trousers in your family? (Who’s the head of your family?) You might affectionately talk about your bro， your sis or your 6)folks (parents). Or if you like 7)Cockney slang， what about “her indoors” or “the 8)missus” to talk about your wife?

If you want to get more technical， you can discuss the benefits of the nuclear family: a small family; just parents and children living in the same house. If grandparents or other relatives live there too， then you have an extended family. In English we talk about the average nuclear family with the phrase “2.4 children.”

Then there are idioms about children that have left the nest (family home) and gone on to have a life of their own. “You can’t teach your grandmother to suck eggs” means you can’t tell your elders anything they know already. But why would

anyone want to suck eggs anyway? Now here’s a really strange one: “Bob’s your uncle.” It means “the problem is solved.” But I’d love to know who the original Bob was， and why he was such a useful uncle to have.

我是一名在俄羅斯任教的英語教師。不知道為什么，我真的很不喜歡這么一個(gè)課堂討論話題——“談?wù)勀愕募彝ァ薄Ｒ苍S是因?yàn)槊總€(gè)人在學(xué)校里都是從同一本書里學(xué)的英文，所有學(xué)生都會(huì)描述說，“我家有五個(gè)成員——我、媽媽、爸爸、弟弟和我的狗”等等。仿佛每個(gè)家庭都一個(gè)樣。

那樣的描述實(shí)在太讓人感到羞愧了，因?yàn)槲覀兠考颐繎舳际仟?dú)一無二的。所有家庭都有自己的故事、起落、不為人知的笑話、綽號(hào)和習(xí)語。家庭塑造了我們性格的方方面面。你是不是常聽到那些初當(dāng)父母的人怨嘆道“哎呀，糟了，我都變我爸媽那個(gè)樣了”？

有一天，我發(fā)現(xiàn)自己開始有點(diǎn)像我的祖父或祖母了。我在努力讓我女兒（一歲零八個(gè)月大）吃飯，我說：“吃飯能讓你的頭發(fā)變卷。”其實(shí)現(xiàn)在的我是不會(huì)認(rèn)為那些綠色蔬菜能使頭發(fā)變卷的，甚至也不覺得卷發(fā)有什么了不起的。那不過是我小時(shí)候從祖父那聽了上百遍的一句話而已。它一直留在我腦海里，處于半被遺忘狀態(tài)，直到能派上用場時(shí)才被喚起。不知道祖父是否也是從他父母那兒聽來的呢？有多少像這樣的老話，盡管被其他人遺忘，卻能在家族內(nèi)一代傳一代？

搖搖族譜大樹

談?wù)勀愕募彝ィ俊班拧褪悄莻€(gè)樣子”我們回答道。家對我們來說是那么的平凡，有時(shí)我們會(huì)覺得自己的家很沉悶。但事實(shí)遠(yuǎn)非如此。家庭是地球上最奇特的東西。如果你對自己的家庭研究得夠深入，你肯定會(huì)找到一部偉大小說需要的所有素材。出人意表的角色、跌宕起伏或妙趣橫生的故事代代相傳。