This post is for Chuckles, who I always now give a hard time to about all the hard times he gave us while growing up. I keep a journal of "Memories that Make Me Smile" which I either write an entry into or read from when I feel the need to cheer up & remember the good times (although I haven't added a new memory in several years... I should really get on that). Tonight I felt like reading over some old memories & this one caught my eye & I felt like posting it to the blog. As recently as two weeks ago we teased Chuck about his behavior to us when we were little.... I hope the fact that many of the memories that make me smile include Chuck's "bullying" convince him that I wouldn't trade those experiences for the world -- he was a great older brother!
Note that when I write the entries it's typically stream of thought & below is unedited, so excuse the grammar & quality of writing... enjoy :)
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Riding in backseat of the old grey-blue van, I sat with my elbow propped against the cleft where the car window merges
with the interior, my temple resting on my fist, head tilted downward towards
my book, eyes reading intently. I was
never one of those kids to get car sick, the jumpy pages as my hands shook with
the car rumbling over the Midwestern interstate didn’t bother me. It was the hot summer of 1988, a year I could
easily remember as the forests of Yellowstone National Park had suffered from a
severe fire, and that was where we were headed from our home in Maryland for a
three week vacation. I was anxious about
visiting the park, imagining the skies dark with smoke and the flames rising
above the treeline, heat billowing out and while the fire surrounded our
family. But the park was open
nonetheless as the fires were basically under control.
This was also the summer before my fifth grade year
of elementary school, and I was engrossed by my newest favorite series of
books, The Baby-Sitters Club, reading all about the trials and tribulations of
this tight-knit group of girls who were only a couple years older than me. Suddenly a movement caught the top of my
eye. A shy pair of fingers was emerging
over the seat in front of me, crawling in a most gentle way until they rested on
top. The fingers belonged to my older
brother Chuck, who would be a sophomore in high school in the upcoming school
year. Chuck had been laying down in the
front seat, head propped up against the armrest and feet stretched across the
seat and over my grandma’s lap, whose head was tilted forward and slightly
sideways, scarecrow like, asleep.
Apparently the thrills of the Great Plains hadn’t been sufficient to
keep her attention either. I had thought
Chuck had been asleep also, but the hand proved me wrong on that subject.
So, I sat for a minute regarding the hand, which
every once in a while jiggled it’s fingers engagingly, a friendly coo coming
from its direction. It cuter than I
could have imagined a hand could look, like a little playful creature. Suddenly, a fist came hammering down on the
creature hard, flattening it against the seat with the fingers outward,
like a dead spider, accompanied by the word “splat”.
“I don’t want to play right now,” said my brother
Robert beside me, to whom the fist belonged, who like me had been engrossed in
a book till the creature appeared. Chuck
then shimmied upward, still facing sideways with his head and torso propped
against the car side and window, feet now crossed in front of him. My grandma gave no indication that the
removal of his legs from her lap or our talking had disturbed her slumber in
the least. Chucks head was facing
towards us and he said innocently and grinning ever so slightly as he said,
“It’s only the Tickle Bug. He’s nice”.
The whole trip so far, it seemed whenever my older
brother was bored he would begin teasing us with “bugs” that he invented. He would crawl his hands over us others, over
our arms and shoulders, onto our laps, and even onto our heads. Some of the bugs were fun to play with, such
as the friendly Tickle Bug which had cooed at us a moment ago. This bug would sometimes just gently tap it’s
way up your arm, gently tickling, sometimes aggressively tickle the victims
side or stomach. Even this wasn’t
horrible. None of us children were
particularly ticklish, it being a weakness in the household fights. I had friends that as soon as they were
ticklish, they were out, laughing and crying and balled over, defenseless. Such a weakness would have made any of us
younger kids victims of tickle attacks often and at any time, so it was a
sensation we learned to ignore. Anyhow,
the First bug had been the Tickle Bug, and that had been fun to play with for
awhile until both us younger kids and Chuck the bug got bored of it, passing it
off from hand-to-hand to crawl up your arm, much like one might do with an
actual lady bug or lighting bug they had caught and didn’t seem to want to fly
away.
At this point, Tickle Bug transformed into Pinchy
Bug, a mean thing whose name said it all.
This bug was not cute, and it did not crawl daintily from side to
side. This bug jumped from place to
place, pinching or twisting where ever it landed, sometimes small pinches where
it grabbed only a small piece of skin, sometimes large pinches where it caught
a good bit of ones flesh in its grip, sometimes light enough to leave only a
red mark which disappeared in a moment, sometimes leaving bruises. Needless to say us young ones were rather
unhappy with this transformation when it occurred, and whined to our parents in
the front seat that Chuck was bothering us till Dad yelled and the bug
disappeared, Chuck turning around to face forward again. A moment later, Pinchy Bug would be back
reeking havoc on our flesh jumping madly from Butch’s hand to my thigh to Rob’s
neck, pinching happily all the while, and once again we’d cry for our
parents. This time my Dad would be tired
of the motion and would yell at us.
However, bad Chuck would be undeterred and happy with the commotion he
was causing, and another moment Pinchy Bug would leap over the seat once more
at the attack. At this point we’d try to
splat the bug, pounding our fists wherever it landed, before it had the chance
to get it’s pincers ready. Often us
three in the backseat would end up virtually punching one another, punching
ourselves even, in the effort to splat the bug, the only way to kill it and
stop the pain. It would look like a
fist-fight taking place in the backseat of our car. Nobody would be having fun at this point but
Chuck who enjoyed the entertainment immensely.
When we finally did splat the bug, it would remain squashed and kind of
sidle back over the seat, until the next bug came. Nobody knew who would show up next, Tickle
Bug, Pinchy Bug, Invincible Pinchy Bug (my personal least favorite), Scratchy
Bug, Dancing Bug, you name it.
So it was not surprising Robert had reacted in this
way to the harmless looking hand/bug creature that had emerged over the
seat. Chuck, it seemed, did want to play
regardless of Roberts wishes, because at that moment he cried out “Invincible
Pokey Bug” and the freshly flattened bug sprung up again, this time taking
small hops over the seat towards Robert, with motions not unlike a child
playing chopsticks on the piano. When he
arrived in front of Robert he quickly sprung from the seat to Roberts side,
where he proceeded to jump up and down with more ferocity, poking and
jabbing. Rob tried to splat it but being
invincible, the bug kept poking away, knocking Robert’s book The Hobbit to the
car floor, and Robert whined “Mo-oomm”.
And the car continued to roll across the fields of grain to the wild
wilderness in the west.
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