As a kid, I didn’t get in a lot of trouble. Go ahead, ask my brothers. They’ll tell you I was spoiled and received preferential treatment because I was the oldest and the only girl.
I’ll tell you I didn’t do stupid stuff.
Okay, there was that one time when I was 5 and decided to launch rocks over the house with my little shovel. It was a feat of engineering for someone my age. Mom didn’t see it that way when one of the rocks came crashing through the front window. Oops.
But seriously. I was well-behaved. My brothers were…boys. Kyle and I are 18 months apart and Ryan is 2 and 1/2 years younger than him so we’re stair-stepped pretty nicely. From the start, right after Ryan was born, I was placed in the middle and it was for a reason. Then it was because they were both in car seats and I was the only one who could wear a seatbelt. After they both grew out of their car seats it was because they would go after each other like a pair of rabid wolverines.
Kyle and Ryan bickered and picked at each other like there was nothing more fun in the world. Back and forth, all the way to church and from; on the way to school and on the way home; roadtrips — forget roadtrips. Those were the worst. “Stop touching me!” “You’re too close to me!” “He’s got more leg room!” “I want to sit on this side!” “No, I called it first!”
Gripe gripe gripe gripe gripe. My parents wonder why I was so bossy. I felt like a referee in the middle of that mess! And everyone knows that the person in the middle is the one suffering. Four words — feet on the hump.
The fact that I was in the middle never did what Mom and Dad intended (reduce the number of fights between them). Instead, I was just caught in the middle. After a while I think I started finding humor in it. I could get away with a lot of tiny things because my brothers were always going at it and my parents were too busy scolding them. I am what my dad calls “a pot-stirrer.” I might not have been in the fight, but I was definitely fueling the fire.
One evening, we were on our way back from The City and I don’t remember the exact circumstances, but what I do know is that my dad had had enough. The boys were fighting, we were almost home, and it had been a long day. And Kyle had one of his favorite G.I. Joes with him. Flint.
Flint had this awesome pack he wore (pictured above) that you could fill with water and he would shoot eco terrorists. With water. (Sidenote: The Gulf Coast could really use you right now, Flint.) He also had “color-change battle damage.” You know, the same old thing that happens to you when you get covered in toxic waste, acid, deadly oil spills, etc. So that was pretty cool. We all liked Flint. Personally, I liked to put his helmet on my finger and play like he was a little puppet.
Kyle, however, liked to put the helmet in his mouth. Now, he was still pretty young and those little pieces are choking hazards no matter what the age. For Dad it was probably a combination of that and the fact that everyone had been touching that helmet. Germs are not something you mess with in this family. And like I already said, Dad had enough. Enough. When that word came out of my dad’s mouth, you knew it was serious. And he had told Kyle twice already to get that helmet out of his mouth.
I think the threat had already been made. When Dad looked in the rearview mirror and saw the helmet on the tip of Kyle’s tongue for the third time, he said, “Give it here.”
Hand it over he did because there was no more messing around at this point. Down rolled the window and out flew the helmet. There may have been tears, I don’t remember, but things were never the same. What is an Eco Warrior without his helmet? He faces a world with traumatic brain injuries and deadly poisons seeping into his gray matter around every corner. And so he retired. I’m sure he still saw some terrorist fighting action, but not as much. Eco Warrior Flint was the first G.I. Joe I remember the boys having that had gear of any kind that you could control. Not long after, he was relegated to a life unfitting for any G.I. Joe at Sudsy Waters Seaside Retirement Village and Bath Tub with Moosel the Wuzzle.
Oklahoma girl through-and-through. Writer, aspiring domestic goddess and totalitarian dictator. Taking on the world one carb-induced coma at a time. Founder of GodlyGals, a ministry for women established in 2002. Co-host of Picture Shows & Petticoats. 
