We're The Closest Family Ever

This is how close we are.

I helped my dad set up his own blog. To see if it was working and was registering with Google, I googled his name, Ben Merkley. Yup there it is, right at the top. But wait, what is this? ---- Hmnnnnnn, it's my dad making some kind of comment in The Deseret News, that's Salt Lake City's biggest paper. Oh looky there, turns out my very own brother Dan and his wife were in the Malidive Islands when the tsunami hit.

Salt Lake City resident Ben Merkley said his son and daughter-in-law were on a small atoll in the Maldive Islands when the killer waves hit. Fortunately, Dan Merkley and his wife, Marshawn, escaped injury because their island happened to be sheltered by a larger island that took the brunt of the hit.
"They could see the water rising, and it came to the top of the beach," Ben Merkley said, after speaking Sunday by cell phone with his son, an actor who portrayed park ranger Tartan Jones in this summer's Mormon-theme movie, "Baptist At Our Barbecue."

Considering that the couple had considered Sri Lanka as a vacation destination and had also spent the previous day on Male, which "was inundated with water," Ben said he was grateful the couple was unharmed.
"I was astounded," he said. "It all missed them by only a hair's breadth."

Apparently this news is big enough to print in one of the nations big newspapers but not big enough to tell me, the coolest member of our family. I have to find it out from Google. THREE MONTHS LATER!

Granted, I have 17 siblings. But sheesh, one of them narrowly escaped death by the fucking god damn tsunami, THE BIGGEST NATURAL DISASTER OF MY LIFETIME! Make a frickin' phone call.

We're so close.