[HPforGrownups] Re: Sibling rivarly, shipping and the rest of us...

[Meredith Wilson]

No: HPFGUIDX 8578



** And that's exactly where the Richie Cunninghams live, in the 
** imagination.
** Real older brothers sing "Amazing Grace" loudly in the back 
** seat, windows
** down, while you're driving for the first time, make you walk 
** on the other
** side of the street on the way home from school so no one 
** will know you're
** with them, lie under your bed when you're little and reach 
** up and grab
** you, so that you have a lifelong fear of underbed monsters even as a
** supposedly rational adult....shall I continue? I love them 
** to death, but
** Richie Cunnigham they ain't.
** 
** --Amanda, getting all the mileage she can out of past 
** traumas now that
** they feel guilty about it....

Hey, my older sisters were no better, I'll tell you!  Locking me in phone
booths, blindfolding me and taking me downtown and making me lead them home
by threat of pain at, oh, 7 or 8 yrs old, keeping the operation game handy
so when I came to say hi they'd make the game buzz so I'd run away because I
was scared of the sound (3 or 4 y/o then), putting spiders at the door of my
mom's room with me inside, knowing I wouldn't go near the spider and then
I'd be stuck in my mom's room with nothing to do all day, the list goes on
and on.  I'm the youngest of 3 girls and there's 5 years between us (I'm 26,
one's 31, the other 36). 

Truly, I think I relate to Harry because when I was little I always wanted
to be an orphan.  Chalk that up to my sisters... I have always had an orphan
thing - Annie, Oliver, Anee of Green Gables, Francis Burnett books, you get
the picture.  I always imagined myself to be the kid who's had a hard life
but has a heart of gold and it works out for the best in the end.

Now I've not had anything close to a hard life in all reality, but it's one
of those childhood
daydream/go-play-by-yourself-because-we-don't-want-to-deal-with-you kinds of
things.

Mer