Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Those Stories


You know how families have stories that they tell for years and years? You know - those stories that you can never escape from… until everyone who knows them dies? I have previously shared several involving Hipee, concerning her fashion sense and the fact that she’s lucky to be alive. Well, now is the time to share some more of those stories!

(For those of you new to my family, Hipee is my sister, the high powered executive. ED is our older brother, El Dictator. Whiy is our little sister, who was whiney, and PB is Pretty Boy, our youngest brother. The Snack King is my husband, Wonder Boy our son, Just Me our daughter, and Movie Dude our nephew.)

ED dumped me out of the stroller when I was a baby. I don’t know where our mom was or why he, as a two year old, was allowed to push me in the stroller. I should probably interrogate mom to discover exactly why ED was pushing the stroller. It seems almost inevitable that he would dump me out of it. As far as I know I wasn’t hurt physically, but this occurrence also seemed to set the tone of our relationship right from the start. ED would try to control me (or eliminate me) and I would find ways to defy him (although as a baby all I did was cry.) I’m sure, after hearing about this misdeed for years, ED wished his evil plan had worked.

I danced on a TV show. Yup. Could I dance? Nope. It happened on some local children’s show. Some of you will remember these shows, where, between showing cartoons, the host talked to groups of kids who were visiting the TV studio. I think I was there with my Bluebird troop. (Before you could fly up to be a Campfire Girl, you were a Bluebird.) The host was talking to the group of girls I was with and apparently when he asked if anyone could dance, I said I could. Other girls in the troop had had dance lessons and could actually dance. I didn’t have a clue. He asked to see me dance and I got down from the stands and just hopped around, kicking up my legs. I have no memory of this at all but I have had to listen to the story for many, many years. I hate this story.

Hipee ate ED’s bug collection. That’s the story. The facts are simple: she was there, the bugs were missing, and the pins holding them down carefully put back in the Styrofoam. From that point on, the story is Hipee ate ED’s bug collection. She despises this story. She claims that there is no proof. She was also, subsequently, accused of smashing ED’s ant eggs that were carefully placed on top of his dresser, but I know for a fact that she didn’t do that.

Whiy stole my blanket with the blue roses. It’s really my mom’s fault. This is how it went down. Whiy was a baby. Mom was behind in laundry and needed a blanket for Whiy’s crib. She “borrowed” my favorite blanket - the world’s most beautiful blanket with the blue roses on it. She said she was just borrowing it for that night. I loved that blanket. I was reluctant to see it leave my bed and go to Whiy’s crib, to be peed on. Well, Whiy, the little creep, immediately decided she loved my blanket too. Guess who had to give up their beautiful blanket with the blue roses to an unwanted little sister? Yeah. I’m still bitter. Sisters stink, sometimes literally.

PB really was a pretty baby. He was a pretty toddler. He was one of those kids who, even though he was definitely dressed in boy’s clothes, people always thought he was a girl. I can remember Hipee getting pretty angry on more than one occasion, yelling back at people, “He’s a BOY!” I’ve got pictures of him in some pink footed pajamas, hand-me-downs from Whiy, and he looks like a very pretty little girl with short hair. You know what, just between us, for a very hairy man in his late 30’s he’s still kind of pretty. Recently, when picking him up after knee surgery, I had to help him get his socks and shoes on. (Not the first time I’ve done this, although it has been several years.) I’ll tell you exactly what I told him: “You have really pretty feet!” And he does, especially compared to my husband, the Snack King, who has big, ugly feet that are scarred up from a motorcycle accident in his youth. (The Snack King also has a bad back that acts up now and then so I’ve put socks and shoes on his feet before too.)

This is fun, isn’t it? Let’s tell some more stories.

Speaking of brothers trying to eliminate younger sisters, a two year old Wonder Boy threw a C cell battery at Just Me’s head when she was a baby. She was just sitting there, spitting up in her carrier, and “Wham!” a battery came flying through the air. The Snack King about had a heart attack over that one. He probably knew what Wonder Boy was thinking. I guess older brother’s always try to eliminate their younger sisters, because the Snack King once dug a deep pit in his back yard, filled it with water, and then tried to get one of his younger sisters to “wade” through it.

Just Me was a vertical baby. We had to keep her in a vertical position for two reasons. (1) She did not like being horizontal and (2) she was a spit-up baby. That girl just bubbled. Sometimes it was more throw-up than spit-up. We used towels with her more than baby blankets, to ease the clean up. I went through about six months of my life so covered with spit-up or throw-up on a daily basis that I no longer noticed the smell. I just mopped up what I could and went on with my day. I’m so glad she grew out of that stage. It was quite unattractive.

The Movie Dude was one of the chubbiest babies you’ve ever seen. We baby sat him when he was a baby. I have pictures of him I can’t wait to show his girl friend some day. In one he is getting a bath in my kitchen sink. He is sitting in the sink, with a big smile on his face, filling it up with all of his cute baby rolls of fat. I have another picture of him lying on the floor on his tummy. Wonder Boy and Just Me had lined up toy dinosaurs all around his head, in a semi-circle, just out of his reach. He’s just lying there, see-sawing on his belly, smiling. He was such a good natured, happy baby. You know, he’s still like that today.

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