Name: Abigail M. Schilling
The sound of settling
The thing about having a brother 3 years my younger is that there are only certain times in our lives where we are in same life stage. When I was 15 and he was 12 was not one of those stages.
But when I was 6 and he was 3 we made the quite the pair. We lived in a big house in Winnetka with a large, second-floor room overlooking Provident Avenue. I'm not sure how big the room really was, but in my memory it was enormous.
My mom had a system: keep all the toys in the room. And there were a lot of toys. We had every McDonald's Happy Meal gadget every produced and this was back before they started teaming up with Disney. We're talking about the hamburger that TRANSFORMED into a Monster. The milkshake, the fries, they were all part of the toy family.
There was a dollhouse with mismatched furniture and no walls and trees painted on the outside. Some of the couches were too big for the people, some of the people were too big for the beds.
There were tea sets and tea tables and I don't remember ever having a tea party.
I do remember the most fun being had outside of that room though.
The most fun happened when we took all the blankets in the house, even the Star Wars Jedi blanket, and threw them down the staircase. All the pillows, too, and even the couch cushions.
Down the staircase they went and us after them, tumbling down in sleeping bags. Into the pit, him and I, laughing all the way.
We moved that year and then we grew up. The new house didn't have a staircase.
posted by Abigail at 9:18 PM
3 Comments:
I had all those Happy Meal toys too! I did not have a Star Wars blanket. Sigh.
Sissies! Pillows and blankets at the bottom? Oh no. My brother and I landed on hardwood when we went sliding down in sleeping bags. That one time, I was a daredevil and I decided to go face first. Having a sore nose was a small price to pay for the clout that I gained with my older brother.
No, sissies there, Emily. First of all, the house was 100 years old which meant the stairs measured 15 inches each (for some reason they made people lift more back then).... then, the carpet was worn - really worn - thin. So between worn thin carpet and harder wood back then (yeah, wood was harder then as well, really). And finally, they did not slide down in sleeping bags, they jumped like you do in gunny sack races. Well, that insured that whatever came in contact with their bodies, was guaranteed to hit them mid bone for a real clean break! And lastly, there was a window with a ledge that they had to miss. I knew they loved that stairway, but it scared the crap out of me.
BTW, the room was enormous.... and there were LOTS of toys. No one had as many as we did. We had a drum set too, remember?
oyvxx - ooooh, Hebrew for my waste management company!
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