tidbits of ... me!

Tidbit #1:
Shortly before my mom became pregnant with me (correct me if I've got this wrong, mom), she had a miscarriage. She was at the doctor one day for a post-miscarriage checkup when the doctor spotted something on the wall of her uterus. It looked like something that needed to be "cleaned out", but just to be careful they decided to wait a week before they did it. A week later, my mother went in for her appointment and, lo and behold, there I was, beating my heart as big and obnoxiously as I could so that I would be seen and not cleaned out!
That is the beginning of my story.

Tidbit #2:
I entered the world in Vancouver, Canada. I had two big sisters who were happy to have another sibling to play with, and a loving set of parents. From the beginning, we were a pretty happy bunch. Mom tells me that when I was little, my sisters would sit on either ends of the livingroom calling me over to their respective games and toys, thus competing for my attention. I don't remember it at all, but apparently I hated it. My dad says that I was overjoyed when another little sister came along. I was relieved of the task of being the youngest, apparently! So then there were four...


Tidbit #3:
I was always the odd one out in terms of looks. While my three sisters had long mostly straight blond hair, I had curly brown hair. While my sisters were fair skinned, I had an olive colour to mine. While my sisters grew tall, I stayed right around 5'3. (Even the youngest grew taller than me, despite my dad having predicted early on that I would be the tallest!) And while all my sisters had perfect vision, I was one of those kids with the coke-bottle glasses that made my eyes look three times bigger than they were. Yep, I stood out a little, but if ever there was a joke made about whether I was actually adopted, I simply went and stood next to my mom, of whom I was a rather spitting image.

Tidbit #4:
Growing up with three sisters was great. We all got along well for the most part. Me and the youngest had a fair bit of squabbling to get through before we grew up and out of it, but being 3 or 4 years apart, we were all far distant enough in age that we never had many competition issues, or conflicts in friends.

Tidbit #5:
When Anna, the youngest, and I were little, she and I shared a bedroom. We slept on bunkbeds, and regularly traded top for bottom, and bottom for top. I can remember nights when I would be on the bottom and wake up to see a dark figure dropping past me onto the floor. No, we didn't have any rails on that top bunk, but we had a soft carpet, and plenty of junk on the floor to soften our fall.

Tidbit #6:
At about age 10, (Anna would have been 6) we still shared a room, and I remember very well that I had begun the journey of separation from the world of Barbie. I wasn't playing with Ms B. anymore, and was quite proud of how mature I was becoming. Anna, on the other hand, was still happily playing away, and took up a bit of a funny habit. She would wait until I had left the bedroom, would close the door, gather her barbie stuff, and sit against the back of the door, playing. I would return eventually to the room, and would be confronted with a door that wouldn't open, with a little voice behind it saying, "You can't come in! I want privacy!!"

Tidbit #7:
I developed a strange fear of a certain E.T. sticker at one point. It was one of those good old "puffy" stickers, and it was about three inches tall. It was in my sticker book; I had put it there, and I remember memorizing what stickers were on the page before it so I could know when to skip a page. Anna told me recently that she remembers me asking her to flip the page for her, so I wouldn't have to see it. And to think, E.T. was a good guy....

Tidbit #8:
Having had thick glasses since I was about 3 or 4, I grew up learning how to defend myself against other kids' mean comments about my eyes. I remember the most common phrase kids would say was, "Woah! You're eyes are so biiiiig!!!" Of course, upon hearing that, every other kid in the vicinity would swivel and look, at which point the ball would be in my court. I learned quite quickly how to avoid being a victim and use my glasses to make me "cool". I would casually look back at the kid who made the comment, and say, "Yeah, so? Look what I can do!" I would then take hold of the arms of my glasses, and slowly move them away from my face, while holding them at the height of my eyes. Now, anyone who is far sighted knows that far sighted glasses are just like magnifying glasses, so when I did this, it would make my eyes grow to an enormous size. The kid who made the comment would, without fail, say, "Woah! Coool!!!" and laugh, at which point all the other kids would run over and say, "Show me! I wanna see!!" Once I learned this trick, I did it all the time. Thank goodness I learned to laugh things off at a young age! I attribute that in large part to my dad. He always complimented me in saying that I was able to take a joke. Thanks, dad!!!

Thus end my tidbits for the moment!