Today is the birthday of one of my sisters. And so in honor of that I am taking a very lovely journey down memory lane.
Now I grew up in a household with four kids, limited space and the concept of sharing and hand-me-downs. Although fortunately being the oldest I was exempt from having to wear hand-me-downs. Instead I was the one who got to cast off my outdated clothing to someone beneath me. It was really the only privilege I could see that came with being the oldest.
But for the most part we lived in harmony and peace. Or at least we did when everyone was sleeping. During the day we could either be found playing together while carrying on at top volume or screaming at someone for violating a rule. Typically as the day wore on and we got bored playing nicely with each other, we would start to antagonize one another so that we could excite things with a physical altercation of some sorts. Usually it was for invading the sacred ground of someone else’s room or for not sharing the Barbie clothing. Or maybe just for not playing the game the right way.
And honestly you would think that growing up with that chaos would make me want to avoid having a large number of children. But the idea of a large family seems cozy to me. Don’t worry, I said seems. I understand that in order to have large family, you have to create the children through adoption or biologically and you also have to feed, clothe and house them. I think I would prefer to stick with my hypothetical family.
But at any rate, we had quite a few shenanigans growing up. And it probably wouldn’t hurt to mention that Ali was involved in quite a few of them. One of the activities that entertained us the most frequently was tossing Hillary out of our room. She would stuff her finger or toe onto the carpet just inside our doorway, and Ann and I would take this an invitation to drag her down the stairs or toss her down the stairs depending on our mood. This would go on for a while until either we got bored and simply locked the door to our room or until she found a pastime that didn’t involve carpet burn or falling down a flight of stairs.
A lovely example of our adult shenanigans
There was the time that Ali and I spent hours tossing my Hillary’s stuffed toy into a tree to see if we could get it caught in the branches. And then throwing a ball into the branches to knock the toy out. Only to repeat the whole cycle again. Now this might make some people question our IQ but it actually was a game of skill. Until my father came out and demanded to know just what in the world we were doing and to immediately knock it off before the neighbors start questioning their child rearing practices.
Ali and I also came up with an elaborate story involving wolves and an abandoned field to scare Annelise to death. We got some sick sort of satisfaction out of tormenting her. Although why in the world she never questioned our oddly lacking in real world details story, I will never know.
At some point Ali and I also decided it would be a brilliant idea to mix all of nail polishes together. This resulted in one toxic mess. That also got on our brand new carpet. Needless to say it is impossible to remove bright pink nail polish from baby blue carpet. Annelise and I used this nail polish concoction to paint our barbies and make them more beautiful. However when our beautification did not turn out like we had hoped, we would try and coerce Hillary into trading one of her pretty barbies for our barbies with the bad make overs. So then we would have new barbies to ruin.
Not that I got away without torment. My sisters had me convinced that I had a tail for a good portion of time. Sadly that is not the case. I just have a deformed tailbone
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