Tonight my parents had a couple over for dinner who have two young children. The kids were cute in a blonde, bumbling way but never once during the duration of their stay did I wish that my siblings were still babies. (My mother did though. I could see it in her eyes. Whenever she got too wistful, I'd pick up a milk carton, tap the side and mouth the word 'no,' helpfully reminding her of the legal implications of kidnapping.) I am so glad that my brother and sisters are at a civilized point in their maturation. The first fifteen years of my life were punctuated by grape juice mustaches, missing socks, fights over hair brushes, fights over the last piece of bologna, carpet wrestling matches, whining in the backseat because someones ankle had brushed against another passenger's pant leg, opening my journal, finding that someone had crayoned over half the pages, the most upsetting graffiti being a buck-toothed butterfly scrawled over an entry that meticulously recorded an interaction with Darrell (a fellow Spanish Club member who may/may not have liked you because he grazed your gloppy, paper mache encrusted hand while constructing pinatas for Cinco de Mayo), darting, giggling shadows on the other side of closed bedroom doors, screams of frustration over privacy because NO ONE LEAVES ME ALONE! GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUTTT!
No experience is ever completely bad. Though I was frequently embarrassed by them more often than not, I loved my hyperactive family. I love the calm adults they have become too. Sometimes I forget how awesome their age is and for that reason, I am glad for dinner party reminders. As I write this, I am eating a cupcake squirreled away from the dessert plate downstairs. I hear Olivia, my youngest sister, attempting to play with the toddlers. They have discovered our old dress-up trunk. One wears a leather vest and carries a plastic rifle. She points the gun at Liv. "I am the Sheriff and I am going to drag you to jail." Liv, being the pragmatic one, replies, "Wouldn't it be easier if I came willingly?" After thinking a moment, Sheriff retorts, "Okay, fine. Lets walk to jail." Then, as if to reinstate her hardened, Clint Eastwood authority, concludes: "But in one year, I will take you from jail and shoot you until you are dead."
Ah, memories.
