A couple days ago, Moue left this comment about what she and her sister used to do to her brother. It had me laughing so hard.
I mean, yes, it's terrible. But...also funny.
"We used to tell him when he was little that he was a K-Mart Blue Light Special. And that when the blue light went off while we were in the store our parents could trade him in.
So we finally go to a K-mart (We were military so there were few and far between overseas at the time) and sure enough the blue light goes off. My brother, petrified he was going to be traded in starts screaming. It took my parents forty-five minutes to get him calmed down enough to tell them what was wrong."
And then FoggyDew said this: "Moue's story reminds me of what my sisters used to tell my youngest brother: Mom and Dad really wanted another kid, but instead of having one of their own they adopted him...from the monkey house at the zoo. This went on for years.
In the end, though, he got even by telling the same story. To their kids."
Me, I did some terrible things to my younger brother when we were children. When he was really little, I tried to leave him in the park for the wild dogs to eat him.
Turns out that fear of abandonment and being consumed by dogs will really make a kid cry.
It was post-war Bangladesh. There were wild dogs. They really would've eaten him. If someone didn't steal him first.
Fortunately, we had adult supervision.
Funny! My brother was born 10 weeks premature and was in the hospital for probably 2 months after his birth. When my mom finally brought him home he still had issues and cried all.the.time. Not like normal, newborn stuff, but literally 24/7. I told my mom she needed to take him back to whereever she got him, because he was obviously broken!
ReplyDeleteHave you heard from your brother lately? I know there were issues (and please feel free to tell me to mind my own damn business).
I used to hold Sam down with his arms and legs pinned on the floor and drool on him. He was really whiny when he was little (about 5 or 6), so he totally deserved it.
ReplyDeleteUm yeah, I was the youngest of 5.
ReplyDeleteSo I can laugh at these tales of "What I did to my younger sibling when we were kids" but not quite as hard as the average person.
I can't explain in a comment but to this day I'm terrified of E.T. because of a prank my sister and her friend played on me. And I recall a lot of whining..."Do we HAVE to bring Heather?!" Luckily Mom (usually) answered "Yes, she's your sister, we can't leave her behind!"
My sister once told me, when I was 5 or 6 years old, that if I swallowed my gum, my insides would get all stuck together and I'd die a horrible, painful death.
ReplyDeleteShe told me this roughly 3 minutes after I'd swallowed my gum, naturally.
My poor grandmother, for whom English was NOT a strong suit, had to try to understand sobbing child-speak for the next half hour as I tried to make myself throw up my gum.
My brother used to tell me that the pool my parents wanted wasn't tax deductible, so they had me instead. Nice. :)
ReplyDeleteBrother's will just beat on you... but sisters. Sisters will mess with your head...
ReplyDelete... and sometime scratch your arms until they're a bloody mess. Can't forget that...
:-P
Why do they say that childhood is so wonderful when there's lots of evidence of how terrifying it is!? I'll take adulthood any day of the week.
ReplyDeleteI showed your post to my other half and he looked at me aghast and said, HONEY! He then proceeded to laugh himself into a stupor.
ReplyDeleteGlad you got as much out of that in laughter as I did. And really? In India they had wild dogs too? Do they call them Boonie dogs like they do in the South pacific or do they have another name for them? Just wondering. LOL!
Oh my! As kids my older sister and I loved to tease our younger sister, she was a whiney attention seeking little brat anyway but when she was really little our fav terrorise was to pull the head off her doll and leave the head on her pillow and the body at the end of her bed. She would scream in terror when she saw it. Older sibling and I thought that was hilarious. Oh and I was always chasing her with worms out of the garden, she was terrified of them. I once put some in her bed and she wouldnt sleep in her bed for days after that. I got a spanking for that one.
ReplyDeleteCheryl S - That is funny. Logically, a little kid would totally think the baby was broken!
ReplyDeleteAnd no, he still doesn't speak to us.
Wendy - Hilarious! I actually remember thinking he was a really whiny kid, so was this while you were in Delhi?
HK - Youngest of five would be hard. I'm impressed that you have any sense of humor about it.
Jessica - That's so mean. Very funny from a sibling perspective, watching you try to throw up your gum and not die. But mean! I'm sure you were absolutely hysterical and your grandmother was so confused.
SarahLeigh - Cruel. And actually very sophisticated. I didn't know till I was an adult that you got tax deductions.
vvk - You are very right about the distinction. I was never a scratcher, though. Just a head messer wither.
lacochran - Children are horrible to each other, that's for sure. But so are adults. It's just more subtle.
Moue - I'm sure he was horrified and impressed at your creativity. :)
I don't know. We called them pie dogs (pi dogs? no idea how to spell it).
Go-Betty - The doll trick is horrible and terrifying and as a sibling would be very funny. Same with the worm. I bet your parents were furious.
When my little brother was so little he couldn't even walk much on his own, I would pull his baby walker thing into the middle of the family room and run around him in circles, always staying just out of his reach.
ReplyDelete"Or I could bury you alive, but then you'd crawl out with a knife and kill me when I'm sleeping that's whyyyyyyyy"
ReplyDeleteoh sorry, that's not what the post was actually about was it..