Excerpt:

The sheriff delivered the subpoena on my fourteenth birthday.  At first, none of us knew what it meant.  Libel? Intent to malign?

We were being sued because of a magazine article I’d written?

For almost a year after that, it felt like we were living in a kaleidoscope that kept turning, forcing us to change colors and shapes.  Or like we were a top that someone started spinning, asnd then we just kept spinning faster and faster. 

A TV talk show host once asked me:  “When did you realize your family had become a household name?”  In an attempt to be humble (because is there anything more awful than a fourteen-year-old kid whose family has become a household name?), I hemmed and hawed and finally said something stupid like: “Um, I’m not sure we’re really that famous.”

Of course we were famous.  And I’ll tell you exactly when I first knew.  It was after my mom started homeschooling us again in Dallas.  On day, she gave Ben and Laura a test on percents.  The extra-credit question on the test was this:

If 86 percent of all children’s T-shirts worn in this country are Bargain Bonanza-brand T-shirts, and 93 percent of those Bargain Bonanza T-shirt are from the NormalWear line of clothing, what percentage of children’s T-shirts worn in this country has a picture of our family on the tag? (Remember: 100 percent of NormalWear clothing has a picture of our family on the tag.)

I’ll spare you the calculation.  It’s 79.98 percent.  (My mom would let you round that up to 80%.)

But you see my point.  At one time, eight out of every ten children’s T-shirts worn in the U.S. had a little tag in the back with the NormalWear trademark under a tiny silhouette of a family of seven, each the size of a hyphen, waving from a boat.

Our family.  Our boat.  Our world: a kaleidoscope turned by the hands of people who claimed they owned us.