My brother and I had a fairly peaceful relationship growing up - we didn't ever really argue extensively, though we would squabble like any siblings. When we were growing up, we didn't have TV, so my brother and I used our imaginations to invent entertaining scenarios for ourselves. This included a "hand parrot" named, Polly, of course. Always being a "word-a-holic" (Please here see my post on Why I Can't Read Dictionaries at http://sirensecho.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-reason-i-cant-read-dictionaries.html) I had stumbled across the word "polypropylene" (a thermoplastic polymer) and thus Polly, the Hand Parrot had a stock phrase which was "Polly wants a polypropylene pea, please."
For some reason, and I'm QUITE sure, much to the eternal annoyance of everyone around us, this phrase entertained my brother and I endlessly.
But we did argue. Mostly about the line in the backseat which COULD NOT BE CROSSED, yet we crossed repeatedly anyway. And of course, "He's breathing MY AIR!"
However, most of our tiffs were relatively minor, with no major injuries on either side. Mostly.
So... we had figured out how darts worked, and had taken a set of them to go play in the backyard, throwing them into a hula hoop (or attempting - the hula hoop was fairly safe from our juvenile efforts as our aim was remarkably poor.) For some reason, my brother went racing across the yard, just as I loosed the dart. It was one of those moments of horrified slow-motion as the dart had already left my hand, and my brother went zipping in front of me. The trajectory was like a cartoon with dotted lines leading directly to... the... top... of... his... foot.
Both of us were frozen in horror as the dart stuck directly into the top of his foot, quivered for a moment, and came to rest perfectly vertical.
When he was a kid, my brother had a signature habit of gasping a couple times before he started crying in earnest. The first gasp came out, and I panicked, racing toward him and grabbing the dart, yanking it out while yelling "Don't tell Mom!!!" A little upwelling of blood rose up, a second gasp, and my repeated plea, "PLEASE don't tell Mom!"
Of course, I did get in huge trouble. I'm just thankful we weren't allowed to play with lawn darts!
And then there was the time my brother and his friend shot me out of the tree with a BB gun. Of course, they were rubber BB's, but the effect as it impacted my gluteus, was the reaction of instant surprise and me letting go of the tree branch I was using for support, successively hitting just about each one below me on the way down. I lay there in the dirt, gasping for the wind that was knocked out of me with my brother and his friend looking down at me laughing. And what is that reflex anyway, where when someone is injured you have the nearly irrepressible urge to laugh? I realize that people have emotional responses under stress, but when you experience it yourself, it's rather unnerving!
Thankfully, my childhood was relatively trauma-free, though I did end up at the hospital after dumping a huge pot of boiling water on myself at eight, and may be one of the reasons that I despise cooking. I was trying to help cook noodles, and as I was wheeled on the gurney through the hospital corridor, the light strips overhead flashed by just like in a movie. This was not the traumatic part, however, as I was pretty thoroughly in shock by that point. The trauma originated when they were going to apply "Silvadene" (Silver Sulfadiazine) and I absolutely freaked out, thinking that they were applying liquid silver to my chest and I was going to become some android/human amalgamation with Terminator-esque metallic skin beneath my actual flesh.
Yeah, my imagination works like that.
So I absolutely panicked, without having the adequate vocabulary (particularly in my shock state) and just began screaming that I didn't want to turn into a Terminator. Thankfully, my Mom somehow understood that it was the ointment that I was afraid of, and calmed me down by letting me know that it was simply a cream they were rubbing in and would not, in fact, turn me to liquid silver. In retrospect, that would've been pretty cool, but at the time being eight years old, I was completely panicked!
Thankfully, afterward I got my favorite treat of frozen yogurt! And my little brother was pretty awesome, sitting with me and reading to me while I recovered, or watching TV while I held down the couch in my Hawaiian shirt wardrobe (so that medication could be easily applied...)
But mostly our sibling relationship was peaceful, and mostly we just invented trouble to get into together. For instance, one of our favorite tricks was hiding the paddles that Mom would use to spank us. These were the plastic ones that have a small rubber ball on an elastic attached to them... though they inevitably snapped the elastic and became implements of torture instead. So my brother and I became QUITE inventive as to places to hide them to attempt to avoid spankings. However, we were relatively unsuccessful, because in a pinch a wooden spoon, a breadboard or even bare hands would suffice. Still, we ninja'd these weapons, which were fairly thin, into places including under the refrigerator, between the washer and dryer, and behind the water heater.
We got into food that we weren't supposed to be eating, and we broke stuff sometimes... including my head once... We were engaged in an activity that we called "Couch surfing" and we'd pile the giant beanbag on top of the couch, jump on top of it, and "surf" down the two levels, the seat and then the floor. However, having very little understanding of inertia, momentum and the fact that we'd hit the floor, launch me into the VERY pointy edge of the coffee table. With my forehead. I didn't actually crack my skull, but if you felt my forehead in just the right spot, you can still feel an indentation. AND BOY DO HEAD WOUNDS BLEED!!!
My older brother went through a phase where to discipline us two younger kids he would smack our heads together, but unfortunately I picked up this trend, and would randomly grab my younger brother and smash our foreheads together. It's a wonder we didn't suffer concussions and that he can still do math. (My arithmetical abilities were hampered much earlier on... such as apparently from birth.)
Today I'm very fortunate that I have excellent relationships with both my older and younger brothers, with MUCH less forehead smashing and foot dartboards. However, if the beanbag hadn't ruptured and spilled the polypropylene beads everywhere, you might still have found us attempting "couch surfing" - this time moving the coffee table first...
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