Kid Sister

A few anecdotes for you about a few of my experiences as a "kid sister"....

• The day I was brought home from the hospital for the first time, my mother left me unattended and within reach of my 2 1/2 year-old sister, Ginger. When Mom re-entered the room, she found my doting older sister attempting to open my eyelids with pencils. Had she been successful, I might be writing my half of this blog on some sort of special braille-style keyboard due to the gouging of my eyeballs at a very early age. Admittedly, though, Ginger was probably expecting something a little more like this:
  
  (Scarily enough, that actually looks a bit like the two of us at that age.)
  
  

• One of our favorite pasttimes was to construct elaborate houses for our Barbies. Not a Malibu Dream House, exactly-- more just creative furniture (jewelry boxes as coffee tables, etc.) and a second story that was on top of a chair. Always thinking ahead (read: conniving), Ginger would often slyly suggest that I build my house in this special area of our shared bedroom over here, see? Look how much room you have! And you can put the chair right here....yeah! Perfect! I wasn't thinking much ahead, usually, so I most likely didn't notice that my house did not have prime real estate by the end of the day. Because what I may have failed to mention is that my poor Barbie's house would inevitably end up in front of our bed-- our trundle bed. So come 8:30, Mom is having us clean up the Barbie mess, or at least the stuff in the way of sliding the extra bed out into the room. With Ginger's house safely in a corner, my poor handkerchief Barbie beds and rolled-up-socks couches were swept aside to make room for the trundle. This happened fairly often, so you'd think I would have figured out what was going on. But no, I was too swept up in my architectural blueprints and plans for the next grand Barbie mansion that I would again and again fail to build my house on solid ground.

Guess who is the one getting buried?

• I remember a Saturday night when my parents were out that found my sister and I watching one of our very favorite shows, Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman. Something happened to one of Colleen's friends in that episode, but I didn't understand what they were talking about.
  Val: What does "rape" mean?
  And like a true wise older sister, she had just the right answer....
  
  Ginger: Go look it up in the dictionary.
  So I did just that. I pulled the heavy dictionary off of the bookshelf and flipped to the entry. After reading it, I returned to the couch, wide-eyed and silent, marginally scarred for the rest of my life by that dictionary.
  
  Kid sister! Kid sister! I'm gonna tell you everything I know! Kid sister and me....