genetics, etc.

Yesterday I met a man I hadn't seen since I was nine.

When I was nine, I thought he was rather strange. He's still strange now but he makes me make more sense. It's genetics.

I've always felt like I never quite fit into my staid fifth-generation Fremantle side of the family. I swear their criminal ancestors contain more excitement and personality.

My South Australian family are loud, lots of fun but strictly a 'so what have you done this year?' Christmas affair.

But yesterday, I met someone related to me who didn't make me feel like the odd one out.

Dad's cousin owns a 'wog bar' in an old convent in Melbourne. It's on the second floor so you have to ask someone where the stairs are to get there.

We asked, we walked up the stairs and found ourselves in an alternate universe where Geelong Cats paraphenalia collided with Labor Party ephemera from years gone by.

There was no-one home. So we walked back down the stairs. By the bottom step we heard a man singing.

"I think that's him," said my friends. It could only be my relative.

"What are you here for?" he asked.

"To be refreshed. And also heckle you for supporting Geelong," I said.

After establishing that I went for West Coast and the heckling that came after it, we all went back upstairs. He still didn't quite know who I was but he was cottoning on.

As we walked back into the alternate Ablett universe, he pointed to an advertorial from the Good Weekend that he'd stuck to the door. "Kerry Armstrong! What's happened? Myth-busting mum?"

The day before when I'd seen the advertorial with Kerry Armstrong (along with ghost writer) endorsing Coca-Cola and 'debunking myths' about it, I desperately wanted to mock it, too.

I finally fessed up that we were related, and he thought it was pretty cool.

He then asked, "So what will you have?"

After that song and dance about Kerry Armstrong, we couldn't help but say, "Coca-Cola."

But it was that moment of knowing we were related and had a similar sense of humor (and the ability to take the mickey out of one another's football teams - a true show of family) that made sense.

He stuck portraits and posters and newspaper headlines in his cafe like I stuck postcards, posters and beer coasters on my bedroom door in Perth. I knew I got my tendancy to make a scattered collage of thoughts, funnies and themes on flat surfaces from somewhere.

It just took a while to realise that it could very possibly be genetic.

In a good way.