Guest Post from my favorite Brother...he even used a copyright sign!

This is written by my brother, Matthew. Giggle on.



Recently my sister recounted an event from our childhood (hers really, I just gave up a matchbox car and told a teacher) and I wanted to add another. This happened around the same time as the tire incident and in retrospect my sister had a rough couple of years there. I’m including her getting tripped by a Skip-it® and breaking her arm in this series of unfortunate events (for the record she wasn’t “Skipping-it,” some future delinquent was using it as a weapon). But first, as a qualifier, she has forgiven my mother for the following event even if our mother hasn’t forgiven herself.


Speaking of my mother, even though she worked as a nurse she was an early adopter of the soccer mom mantle and as such my parents purchased a minivan when I was four and my sister three. Being in the early eighties minivans were still in their awkward adolescent phase and the silver Toyota looked as if a van and car had mated to produce a hybrid that inherited all the ugly genes. (As an aside, I would inherit this lovely mode of transportation during my own awkward adolescence twelve years later, awesome.) This moon rover looking vehicle shuffled us to and from school, soccer practice and even took us around the country. But really none of those trips (lie) compared to the fun my sister and I had taking it around “The Circle.”

“The Circle” was the long way home in our neighborhood of Westborough. When Ryan Way and St. Christopher Drive came together in a loop of roads behind our house my young sibling and I were ecstatic. We would occasionally whine and beg our mother to take us around the circle after a trip to the grocery store or on our way home from school. We would sit together in the front seat looking out the window at houses (apparently we were easily impressed) as our poor mother drove slowly around in order to placate her annoying children.

One lovely summer day after thoroughly wearing our mother down in the grocery store (this may have been the day she yelled at us to go to our room, in the grocery store) we continued the attack on her sanity by insisting we “Do the Circle” before going home. This maybe eighth of a mile “round” trip took less than five minutes, but those five minutes were valuable stalling time because once we got home our list of chores needed to be finished before our father got home. By chores I mean we were supposed to fill the ice cube trays; between the two of us we rarely got it accomplished. Back in the van and after the both of us had climbed in the front seat and rolled down the window we were en route! Doing a slow drive in one of the most conspicuous vehicles ever designed would have likely made my mother appear a kidnapper if it weren’t for the two kids laughing, yelling and essentially being little shits in the front seat.

Then my sister (generally smaller and weaker than me) who was fighting for position saw something that really excited her (a house). She elbowed her way in to the dominant viewing position and I retaliated. Our combined weight of eleven and a half pounds was enough to push the partially latched door open and I with my catlike/ninja reflexes was able to cling to the window frame as the door swung open flinging my sister down to the hot asphalt at near five miles an hour. What followed next was screaming and wailing from Mary (now a few yards behind us), a delayed reaction from my mother who thought she had run over her own daughter and silence from me who was looking to avoid any blame. The tears of guilt from my mother and the ones of pain from my sister were enough to keep me quiet and out of sight for a few hours once we made it back home.

A deep scrape on her cheek and some bruises were the worst of it. Dad came home and both nurse parents conferred and concluded that stitches were not needed. The nastiest was yet to come as my mother, fearing some huge scar on my sister’s face, scrubbed the wound for a few days after while my (low pain-threshold) sister cried and tried to escape. If she had realized that a big permanent blemish on her face might have severely reduced future “you’re pretty" compliments she’d have scrubbed her own damn cheek. I, on the other hand, somehow avoided blame, pain or guilt in the whole ordeal (my talent) but it was the last time we ever did “The Circle.”