"captain"

My oldest sister, Michal, is quite a gem. She's getting married in December to a super-ultra-wonderful guy and the whole family is excited about it.

Growing up with Michal had its good and bad moments. All of us sisters were fairly spread apart in age with 3 or 4 years between each of us. Michal, then, had a full 3 years to prepare for her role as "2nd mother" before the first of her younglings arrived. Three years doesn't sound like much, but it was enough for her!! Hah!

I remember hating brushing my teeth as a kid. I found it annoying and a nuisance. But Michal was a teeth-brushing nazi. I got out of my bath one evening - I was probably about 5 - and Michal promptly arrived and asked me if I had brushed my teeth yet because it was bedtime. Full of sass, I replied, "Well, I had a bath didn't I?" hoping that such a response would make her think - "oh yes, of course, teeth naturally get clean in a bath". But the 12 year old Michal was wiser than I thought, and I ended up having to brush my teeth under her strict supervision.

I thank her now for my cavity-free mouth.

Reading the last entry, it might seem that my dad was one to get us excited about things, but if he was absent or taking a break from the "exciter" role, Michal was right there behind him ready to take up the reins. Michal could get us (or, at least me) excited about absolute garbage. I mean it. I specifically remember one Saturday when we were all subjected to a morning of cleaning our bedrooms that Michal stood in the doorway of her room and called out, "Who wants to look through my garbage? I have lots of barbie stuff here!!"

Now let me just explain something here. We did not have all the latest toys. No, in fact, I had hand-me-down everything: clothes, shoes, Archie comics... the list goes on. I even had a hand-me-down Barbie that Michal had gotten tired of and so she had shaved off most of its hair so that it had a mohawk and was painted green with a permanent marker. I just imagined that she was pretty. And hey, it was the 80's at the time, so she was rather hip. Um, I'm getting off track here....what I was saying is that we didn't have the good toys, and most of our "barbie stuff" consisted of pieces of styrofoam or old boxes that we'd tape into a certain shape to conform to the piece of furniture we wanted it to be.

Hey, it was probably much more creative than just having a plain old barbie couch, in any case!!!

Anyway, Michal would holler something like the above exclamation, and suddenly she'd have a little brood of excited girls awaiting the "auction". She'd stand in front of us, pulling things out one at a time, showing us how great it was and describing what it could be used for. We lapped it up like bunnies.

At least, I did.

Recently, we were all laughing about this memory, and Michal divulged that the reason she did it was really because she was a bit of a pack-rat and hated throwing things away, so if she could pawn it off on her sisters it made her feel better. HAH!!

Pawn away, Michal. Pawn away.