Sticks and Stones and Lauren's Broken Bones

My sister was an interesting child. And when I say interesting, I mean it wasn't quite evident 100% of the time that she was "all there" in the head. As a prime example, she seemed to have a sick fascination with sticking things up her nose. I can remember many a night rushing to the emergency room to have a button extracted from the far reaches of her nasal cavity with special medical tweezers. Yes, you heard that right when I said "many a night, " as in more than once. You would think after the first time of shoving a button up your nose, you wouldn't exactly be jonesing for a round two, but I suppose my sister thought she was some sort of five year old extreme sportist - and she was working with the limited talents she had.

And the fun wasn't limited to buttons. I remember one time on the way to my mom's doctor appointment, Lauren shoved an orange tic-tac up her nose! This one at least was more strategically planned. For one thing, we were already on the way to the doctor's office. Luckily for Lauren though, this time no nose probing was necessary - tic-tacs dissolve on their own - albeit a LOT more slowly than when they are in the mouth.

When you have a sister that sticks things up her nose on her own accord, it is also a lot easier to blame things on said sister and get away with it. Take, for instance, the time we were outside playing on the swing-set, and Lauren was taking her good sweet time contemplating scooting on down the slide. There is no time for dilly dallying around when there are only a limited number of hours of sunlight (and thus playtime) available. So I did what any reasonable person would do, I helped Lauren move things along by giving her a slight push down the slide. Unfortunately for Lauren, she hurdled not down the slide but over the edge and broke her arm. I had only seconds to convince Lauren that she had jumped from the top of the slide of her own volition before my mom emerged from the house to see what the shrill screaming was all about. And they ate up every word of my story, because everyone expects such behavior from a girl that sticks foreign objects up her nose.

It is shockingly easy to convince little sisters not only to do things, but also make them think that they were the one's who wanted to the illicit activity in the first place. For instance, one morning the day before our scheduled family photos at JC Penny's, I convinced Lauren to cut a nice triangle from the middle of her bangs. She probably believed me that her new hairdo really accentuated those bushy eyebrows until mom walked in and saw our, I mean her handiwork.

The only time I didn't quite pull off the "Lauren did it" trick successfully was the coloring of the wall incident. We had moved to New Jersey with my dad for an extended business trip. One day, while my mom was cooped up in her room taking a nap and leaving me largely to my own devices (who leaves a four year old unsupervised anyway... that is practically begging for trouble!). Anyway, I took the opportunity to hone my newly acquired writing skills, and proudly drew a giant H on the wall. When my mom woke up, I was quick to insist that Lauren had climbed down from her crib and drawn the H. The odds were just stacked too high against me this time: For one thing, Lauren doesn't start with H, nor could she even write at this point, but those are minor details. However, there was just no fooling mom this time. But what can I say, I was young, and still in the process of perfecting the art of lying.

Sadly, my sister has gotten slightly more intelligent over the years...