––What kernels of truth are buried in the myth?

Lynn: Well, Fred and Ruth Midler did live in Paterson, New Jersey during the 1930s. Apparently my grandmother once had a slew of pictures of she and my grandfather hanging out with Bette’s parents. But sometime after both Fred and Ruth (whom my grandmother hadn’t spoken to in probably 40 years) both passed away, my grandmother packaged up the pictures and sent them to the Divine Miss M, via her management, since she thought Bette would like to have them. To my grandmother’s chagrin, Bette never wrote a thank you note. Bupkis.

Neuman: Jerry Seinfeld is my mother's third cousin (my third cousin, once removed), distant enough to have never met him, close enough to be able to pass a lie detector test by claiming kinship. My mother distinctly remembers the story of her grandmother's first cousin Sam Seinfeld (Jerry's grandfather) visiting her apartment in the Bronx when she was an infant. Apparently, Sam showed up with a bad cold, which upset my over-protective grandparents. The story was soon canonized in the annals of family hypochondria (lodged somewhere between the time my brother's friend Jeff threw up in our recreation room and when my mother discovered where I was secretly stashing the Wash N Dries she routinely placed in my brown lunch bag before school). To this day, my mother has never met Jerry Seinfeld, though she suspects that they were both named after Jennie Seinfeld (who was apparently very close to Sam). I haven't met Jerry Seinfeld either, though I do recall receiving several checks from Seinfelds at my bar mitzvah (one from Joe Seinfeld from Montreal, an eighty-year-old "bachelor" and magician).

Nissen: My mom is a former actress, and a big storyteller, and a generally dramatic human being. When she tells a story, truth is not, shall we say, her first priority. It’s about drama. Truth she’s willing to sacrifice for the sake of the story. (And we wonder how I become a fiction writer!) There is, in fact, a great deal of fact in her story of Daddy and Sneezy. Up until a point.

Pope: The myth is a total lie. In fact, we were not descendants of Colonel Pope. My father was born Dominic Roberto Papa, the son of Carlo Angelo Papa, a poor Italian who immigrated to this country in 1898. Soon after my father graduated high school, he legally changed his name, Americanizing it, to the WASP-ish Donald Robert Pope. (Papa means Pope in Italian, so the change came naturally.) He liked that his initials, DR, would make some think he was a medical doctor (he was, in fact, a general contractor). Perhaps this change of identity provided my father with a buffer against any anti-Italian sentiment of the times C the 1940s, when during wartime Italian-Americans were required to register with the FBI and some Italian families were even relocated to interment camps. But, mainly, my father had a waggish quality, and he liked fooling people and being considered a big-shot.

Sherman: That therapy is probably good for some people, but not for every person; that being in therapy might help you read other people, but that it might not be the best thing to help you know yourself; that if your mom is a therapist, then you probably need therapy anyway; that if you are in a family, trying to work within your family, you should probably just move out; that therapy can reach a saturation point.