My mother is an only child and my uncle on the other side died when I was very young. I have two sisters and no brothers. I had trouble socializing in school and I think this may have had something to do with it. When other kids would talk about having a full house at Christmas I had no reference. I can see how a whole country like this could have some serious social problems.
Yeah, I had some problems socializing as a youngster(but for different reasons) so I can relate. I took everything literally, and expected others to do the same. I think I was nearly twenty before I started to feel halfway comfortable with popular phrases and the fact that people don’t mean things literally. I still remember being disgusted with people for parroting the stupid things we say to each other as greetings...hi, how is your day...are you having a good day...how are you doing today...and other nonsense. My feeling was if you couldn’t think of anything more meaningful to say I would prefer you keep your thoughts to yourself. And I had a habit of telling people literally what I thought, although not with insulting words. So you can imagine what the average small talk was like for me...pure torture is what. They would almost always end up calling me names which would result in me literally punching them in the face. Yep, age 5 through 15 was not exactly a fairy tale for me. I think part of it was genetic. I still remember my mother and grandmother both saying sternly “state your business” when a stranger would approach them with meaningless chit chat.
Hey, I'm in Illinois, come on over at Christmas. We had 26 here at Christmas, the down side is that before it was over, I wished that I had been somewhere else, almost anywhere else. I love kids but not all at once!