There is no question about it. 2 + 2 = 4. It is a whole, round, even number. 2 brothers and 2 sisters make a tidy family, the edges tucked in nicely. But along came 5 and blew the house down. Nothing adds up. The family name is defenceless in the face of this onslaught of miscalculation.

Miscalculations often add up to no great sum of mistakes. But this depends on who is counting. There are theories that suggest that the family is the institution that needs to be protected. But in this revolution of sentiment, the black sheep of the family must take up arms and fight for what is the right of sentimental outcasts everywhere.

5 was the last-born who came wailing into the world. This is the family lore: She was plucked from trash. No, here is the truth: The brought out the wrong baby the first time. Maybe the wrong baby grew up well-adjusted. As for 5, 5 betrayed her bourgeois legacy and fucked up three things: 1) Money; 2) Success; 3) Fruitful heterosexuality.

The family, said Marx, "contains within itself in miniature all the antagonisms which later develop on a wide scale within society and its state." 5 felt a pain in her stomach like the explosion of a relentless truth. 5 also suspected it fell on the last-born to revolt. All that is solid melts into air, unfortunately, but the good news is that the black sheep also rises.

5—thus far quietly and unobtrusively black sheeping it up—must take up arms against the tyranny of even numbers. Abolish this factory of docile beings. Show them the beauty in ugliness and chaos in miscalculation. The real is always in the error. Sometimes it grows up quickly. Sometimes it stays young. Sometimes it's in the trash.

But once it comes out, it won't go back.