Monday was a clumsy child

Hello, girls! It's Monday!

Alexandra - I second Christina's comment -- I like how in not having family stories, you end up with a cobbled together sort of story.

Carlyn - Your parents are adorable. Just sayin'.

Christina - Your mother and her sisters sound like my dad and his siblings, who used to sing two-part countermelodies in the car on long road trips.

And now, moving past stories about family and on to stories about ourselves, here we go.

My earliest memory is falling down the stairs. I was . . . maybe two? We were living in a house with one floor and a basement, and the stairs to the basement were covered in this thick, ugly orange shag carpeting, which is pretty much the only thing I remember about that house. It was summer, I believe, and I had just been given a popsicle, and I was heading down to the basement for some reason. My memory tells me it was the tornado sirens, but my parents tell me that's inaccurate. Anyway, something happened, and, being two, I fell. All the way down the staircase. Bouncing off each step. But! That popsicle? Not one bit of carpet fuzz on it. Two years old, and I knew my priorities. :)

My second earliest memory was the birth of my little brother. I actually wrote up the story for a children's literature class. Jeffrey was born six weeks before my third birthday. He was also six weeks premature. Doing the math, he was due just about at my birthday. So, I got it into my head that he was going to be my birthday present. And I wanted a sister. A sister would mean two against one on my older brother, plus it would be someone to play with and teach things to and all that jazz. Plus, hello, birthday present. I couldn't get a birthday present I didn't want, and I didn't want another brother. Been there, done that. So, when he was born, I went to hospital expecting a baby sister. So imagine my chagrin when the nurse brought ought this . . . boy. Actually, you don't have to. It's all cataloged in photographs. Me, beaming with excitement. Me, looking in puzzlement at the nurse. Me, glaring down at the bundle of baby I am holding. Ah, sibling love.

But the tale that gets told over and over at family functions is the one I alluded to last week. Backstory:

My cousin and I were both very imaginative and creative children. She was . . . slightly more mischievous, though, and a more forceful personality, so wherever she went, I followed. From an early age. When we were three, our aunt was married, and so the family rented cabins in New York for a week to help with all the preparations. Well, at one point, she and I were both inside our cabin and all the adults were elsewhere. My older brother was watching us, but not really because he was seven. Anyway, to make a long story short, I had markers, and she had a penchant for coloring on the walls. Putting two and two together . . . we colored on the walls. Of a rented cabin. With marker. My grandmother still, twenty years later, does not find this story amusing.

That's all I got for this week. I look forward to hearing your childhood tales!