Given that the age difference between me and my three siblings is, respectively, 15, 12, and eight years, I'm surprised I've made it this far in life.
Along comes the baby of the family 鈥� or, as I like to call myself, the youngest. Or the favourite 鈥� and, boom, there's an easy target for my two brothers (my sister, Diane, is a saint and only treated me like gold).
Take the family football games in the backyard, for example. Brother Don and I, against brother Jim and a cousin.
"Go do a down and out at mom's rose bush," said Don the quarterback. I happily obliged. And every time, the throw from brother Don was just out of my reach, and my momentum would carry me into mom's cherished rose bush, scratching me all about.
That was nothing compared to the tongue lashing I got from mom who always seemed to notice when her youngest went running through her roses.
I never caught the ball. I never stopped in time. And I never caught on that my brothers and cousin were in cahoots to get the favourite in trouble.
Oldest brother Jim and his wife Betty left Vernon to move to Trail, where he found work at the smelter. He and Betty took me and Betty's brother Doug over to their home in Trail one summer. As we entered Grand Forks, Jim drove his station wagon over the white line on the side of the road. I happened to be sitting in the back right passenger seat.
"Well, Roger," said Jim proudly; "Now you can tell everyone you've been in the United States."
I, of course, believing everything my brothers told me, fell for this gag.
There is, somewhere, a picture of me tethered with a rope to the clothes line in our Mission Hill (or Hospital Hill, as some Mission Hill snobs decree) backyard like a common dog. Mom did that, "so I wouldn't run away." I have no doubt one of my brothers put the idea in her head.
As for St. Diane, well, she married young and moved out so I don't remember a lot other than I know she worked for Dairy Queen, and that she and her BFF, Barb, took me to Vernon Senior Secondary one day for their child care class. My sister has since given birth to six kids, has nine total (three from her second marriage), and I've lost count of the number of grandkids she has.
Diane will send her three brothers her legendary butter tarts. Don and Jim have helped me with countless moves, and both of my brothers have housed me. When our dad died in 1975, I was 12 and my brothers became father figures.
I'd be nowhere in this world and lost without all three of them.
Happy National Siblings Day, Thursday, April 10, Jim, Diane, and Don.
Love, the youngest/favourite...