Survival Story

Something you may or may not remember about me if you’ve read this here trainwreck blog for awhile is that I am the youngest of three children. I was not, however, blessed with older sisters, instead I got these two nerds:

(We are pictured with our paternal grandmother on her 90th birthday a couple of months ago.)

The nerd in the glasses is my brother Charles, who is almost seven years older than me, the bald nerd is my brother Andy, who is four years older than me. As you can imagine, with them being so nerdy, and me being so awesome, they were quite jealous of me from the moment I was born. This led to me enduring more than my share of envy-fueled torment at their hands. “Like what?” you say.

Well, since you asked, I’ll tell you.

When I was three years old I was given a stuffed white teddy bear named Bob. Oh how I adored Bob. Bob’s fur was probably the texture of fiberglass compared to those super-soft stuffed animals they make today but I loved Bob truly, madly, and deeply. I carried Bob around all day and we slept together every night. He kept me safe from bad dreams and the Boogie Man and his cronies. But sadly, Bob could not protect himself – or me – from my brothers.

One of my brothers’ favorite activities was to steal Bob from me, play “keep away” with him, and then stuff his head inside his body before returning him to me. Once Bob was safely back in my arms, I’d dig his head back out of his innards only to find that all the stuffing from his head was still inside his body. So while Bob’s head flopped around like a popped breast implant, I’d spend the rest of my pre-naptime hours trying to slowly squeeze the stuffing back into his brain.

Ah, the memories.

Both of my brothers now have children themselves, and Andy’s four children especially love to hear tales of his childhood, um, treatment of his little sister. They can hardly believe that the lovable, hairy (seriously, they could use his arm hair to line parkas) man they call Dad was once a mean little punk of an older brother.

“Aunt Jenny, tell us about the time Daddy locked you in the garage when you had a babysitter!” they ask, wide-eyed. “Did Daddy really make you eat cat food?” (YES, and it was “Meow Mix”, apparently cats and gullible little sisters ask for it by name.)

I always have a few anecdotes to add, making sure they are privy to classics such as “Did you hear about the time your Dad flipped me off of his skate board?” and “You know what was great? When your Dad was pretending to cut my hair and actually DID! A nice big chunk of it! And we were at church at the time!”

What with them being such hooligans and me being so tormented, it’s a wonder we all grew to be such well-adjusted adults. Somehow, even though they called my Cabbage Patch Kid “Doofus” (her real name was “Dorena Monica”, thankyouverymuch), jumped out from behind doors to scare me to death, and kept their Star Wars toys out of my reach (wait, maybe that was a good thing), by the time I reached adolescence, my brothers and I had forged some sort of friendship. I cried when my brother Charles went off to college when I was eleven, went on cruises to Dairy Queen for lime Mister Misty’s with my brother Andy when I was twelve (and he drove a suh-weet orange car), and blubbered like a baby when they both got married before I finished high school. And even now that we are in our 30’s, we still really enjoy making fun of each other spending time together. They are, without a doubt, two of the most hilarious (and nerdy) people I know.

So I must say after 31 years of evaluation, that older brothers are not so bad. If you can survive the early years, they will eventually make up for the torture with nieces, nephews, free babysitting, and good jokes. Plus, if you are lucky like me they will marry awesome women and give you older sisters without all the angst, and you will never have to worry about sharing your favorite lip gloss or denim skirt.

I don’t know how Bob the Bear feels about it, but I think I’ve got it pretty good.