Do you know how your parents met? Where your grandparents went to school? Your mother's first job? My friend (and travel agent!) Carol Shaddux came up with a fun way to use the Do You Know Scale, a 20-item questionnaire I developed with my colleague Marshall Duke to assess knowledge of family stories. Carol suggests writing out each of the 20 questions on a strip of paper and having each family member pick one and then either tell or ask to hear that story.
Sleepaway camp wasn't exactly part of my childhood vocabulary. My parents didn't believe in paying money for me to rough it in the woods. Instead, summers meant Chinese school, then long afternoons upstairs in their restaurant, tinkering with the office equipment as they worked. My "campfire" was the blue glow of an Xerox bulb as I copied my face and various body parts into high-contrast collages.
During a family dinner last year, she interrupted our meal - "You know, your great-grandfather was an illegal bootlegger. He even invented a popular cocktail." She launched into stories about secret liquor production behind a clothing store, an unheard-of relative on the lam called "South American Joe," and narrow escapes from the law. My father occasionally interrupted by saying, "That didn't happen," but my wife, kids, and I were completely captivated.