My mother is a special education teacher but also an artist, and my father an advertising executive. They are about as wacky as you can get without being alcoholics.

Crosley sketches a quick, comic portrait of her upbringing by juxtaposing two creative, unconventional professions—special education teacher/artist and advertising executive—and then puncturing any sentimentality with a deliberately sharp punchline. The line signals an affectionate irreverence: her parents are “wacky,” meaning imaginative, eccentric, and perhaps socially offbeat, but the qualifier “without being alcoholics” uses dark humor to mark a boundary between quirky and dysfunctional. It also hints at the essayistic persona Crosley is known for—self-aware, observational, and willing to use hyperbole to compress family history into a single, memorable beat.