"Snips and snails, and puppy dogs tails - that's what little boys are made of!"
When I was a little girl, I had a tiny little curl ... right in the middle of my forehead. When I was good ... I was very, very good ... but when I was bad...
I plotted against my brother and the boys in my neighborhood.
I was surrounded by boys… scheming was my survival skill. If something bothered me I would muse about it until I came up with a plan.
When I was eight I remember my brother picking on me mercilessly. He was three years older, and wished for a younger brother. Since I somehow ruined his best plans for this, he brutalized me as if I was his younger brother.
He didn't understand that deep inside me lay the diabolical mind of a redhead.
I prized all my girly-girl possessions and believed that each cherished toy was real - even down to my rocking chair. I would talk to just about every item in our home growing up. (I only do this now when drinking too much wine). My brother loved to extort vengeance using this little known fact about me. If he wasn’t hanging my dolls by my ceiling light, he was burying them in the backyard dirt with their feet sticking out. I was forever telling on him. No wonder our parents drank martinis.
One Saturday he decides to use my rocking chair like a bow to a ship. Hestands upon the seat with sword in hand, rocking back and forth like he is traversing a storm at sea. I, on the other hand, am screaming at the top of my lungs for him to get down off my rocking chair. I am sure the pitch of my shrill woke up my dead ancestors in Ireland. My rocking chair hated him, and at that moment so did I. He refused to get down and kept pushing on my head with his left hand.
We began to fight. I was trying to kick him with my perfect black baby doll shoes. In his effort to balance and push me down by my head, he fell over backwards (rocking chair and all) on to my bedroom floor. By now I am yelling and screaming for our mom. She enters the room in time to see my rocking chair split in two, as he lands with full force on the back of the chair hitting the floor. In anger, our mother (she is also a redhead) grabs the top of the splintered back of the rocking chair and spanks him. He races out of the room to avoid her further killing him as “Catherine the drama queen” (me) sobs over the broken rocking chair.
My brother ends up on restriction for the week. My dad, the man who could fix everything, promises me that he can make my rocker just like new. He takes it out to his workbench and begins his painstaking reconstruction of my beloved rocking chair. But this was not good enough for me. Every night as I sat across from my brother at the dinner table I vowed I would get even. Little did I know in two short weeks I would get the opportunity…
Growing up we also had a Persian cat named Mittens. My mother, the nurse and scientist allowed Mittens to breed every now and then so my brother and I could watch the birth of kittens. I think this was some sort of sick effort on her part to make sure we never had sex. We then were made to care for the kittens and sell them for money, which went towards something we wanted (as long as our mother approved it).
At this time, Mittens had a new batch of kittens that were housed in a 5-foot bin in the garage. They were about four weeks old at this point. My father built the bin in such a way that Mittens could climb out, but the kittens remained there unless we removed them.
Also at this same time, my mother and father temporarily gave up the use of the garage for one of my brother and his friends massive train cities. About once a year they would all bring over their train tracks to our garage and set up this huge landscape of train tracks, stations, houses, trees, cars, dirt and about 5,000 army men. They would spend weeks getting their landscape absolutely perfect. At some point in the future they would get together and destroy it all in one big pretend battle scene from World War II.
The week my brother was on restriction, he spent the time he wasn’t doing chores, finishing up the landscape for just such a battle day with his friends. The Saturday after he was let off restriction he went to gather all his friends and bring them back to the garage. I didn’t have much time…
Don’t ask me where my mother and father were at this time, because I have no idea. But I quietly moved passed the kitchen like a lion stalking her prey. With the precision of a bank robber, I slowly opened the back door to sneak into the garage. Every inch of the floor was covered with cars, trucks, trees, rocks, dirt, train tracks, bridges, and a long 6 foot train set sitting ready at the station. It was perfection. In the background I can hear the tiny quiet meows of eight furry, fluffy kittens. I maneuver my way over to the bin and push an old chair up against the high wall. I stand on the chair and reach over to scoop up one kitten at a time, and then I gently release each kitten to the floor of the garage. Now mind you, the garage door is closed. Shortly, all eight kittens are out of the bin and on the floor of the garage. As I slowly exit back into the house, I turn to view the kittens. One was already sitting on a train, another had a tree in her mouth, and a third was beginning to bat at the line of soldiers nearest to the bin.
I crept back into the house un-noticed with a big grin on my face. About two hours later I hear all this yelling in the garage. My brother is having a fit over the fact the kittens somehow got out of the bin. I guess they did a pretty good job at destroying his train country. I never went to look, as I was afraid I would some how give away the fact that it was I.
I never told him until we were well into our 30s…
So today a friend sends me a link to the following You Tube video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcKOQrz19Yg
And I think, “Yep, this is how boys are when you trust them with your stuff”…
Occasionally I catch Brian and his guy friends getting into my stuff to create God only knows what. Their idea of heaven is to find something to dig up ... blow up ... or torment.
But I am on to them ... I have had practise with boys. I am great at intercepting before they successfully pull down a neighboring oak tree. Poor Boonie our terrier dog ... Brian can't ever see this video.
And guys... you never change.
Until next time-
C
