STORIES #2&3- CON'T FROM YESTERDAY

Story #- Barbie has had a terrible accident.

Growing up, I was a princess tomboy. I was always willing to play "ran sack the quarterback", another one of my brother's fab games, in which I was the quarterback, all forty seven pounds of me, and he and my cousin, T.J., were the defense line. Basically, I would try to run past the two of them with the ball for about two seconds until they tackled me. But, on the other hand, I liked to be girlie, dress in pink, watch beauty pageants, and play with my barbie dolls.

All of my Barbies had names, and occupations, and family members. I was always having barbie beauty pageants, and weddings, and I would often force my family to play along with me. I would plead with my mom to judge my beauty pageant. I would beg my oldest brother to play piano for the wedding. Tim, often, was a good sport and would play along- truthfully, I think he liked judging my barbie beauty pageants.

One day, however, my cousin T.J. was over at our house and he and Tim were playing outside. I was in the house minding my own business, when Tim came running into the house to tell me that "Barbie has had a terrible accident." I ran outside to see one of my barbies and one of my kens burned on my driveway in my Barbie corvette.

I screamed and demanded to know what he had done. My brother, being my brother, just spoke calmly. It can't always be beauty pageants and weddings, Laurie, he told me, as if somehow I would see the merit in what he had done. I'm just trying to teach you about real life.

For once, however, he was unable to charm his way out of the situation. He and my cousin were both grounded and forced to earn money to replace my barbies and my barbie corvette, which they had doused in gasoline, that my dad had in the garage, and then lit on fire with a match. Little bastards, they were.

Story #3 The Cadbury Egg explosion

Another one of my brother's hair brained schemes involved my Easter basket. Do you remember when cadbury eggs were first introduced? The bunny in the commercial made chicken sounds before laying those delicious cream filled eggs. I wasn't even sure, at first, that I would like them, but just because of the commercial, I wanted them.

As it turned out, Tim and I both really liked cadbury eggs. If I remember correctly, they came in a three pack box, and so these were the prized possessions of our Easter basket. I liked to save mine and eat them gradually over time. My brother, who at the time was a little chunky, which is funny because now he is the skinniest person I know, and also the most health conscious, would gobble his all up on Easter Sunday.

Like the idiot that I was, I never thought to hide my basket. It was like leaving sheep out for a wolf. Days later, the cadbury eggs were gone. Where did they go? I wondered. My mom and I looked everywhere, but nothing. My brother, knowing, he would be the obvious suspect, "came clean". Oh, he said, I'm really sorry. I saw your eggs still in your basket, and I didn't want them to melt, so I put them in the freezer. I went to make sure that they were still there, and that's when I saw that they had exploded. I'm really sorry, he said.

Even my mom believed him,, although pretty much to this today, she treats anything that either of my brothers say as Gospel. A little while later, however, my brother's burning desire to tell me how he had pulled one over on me won out. Since, it was so much after the fact, he didn't even get in trouble. I didn't learn from the experience, either, so I guess it served me right when the next year he stole my Easter candy and sold it at lunch to his friends. I only found this out because one of his friends had a crush on me and ratted him out.

My brother's worst punishment for all the wrongs that he perpetrated against me is that I do have a razor sharp memory. I often recall these incidents to embarrass him. Of course, he always denies that these events ever transpired, but deep down inside, he knows, and I know... and I have a wealth of funny stories to tell, and now I am grown up and I can buy as many cadbury eggs as I want, and I play with my daughter's Barbies, so all in all, in retrospect, I am glad that my brother was the little shit, I mean, prankster that he was.