Rock beats scissor. Scissor scares you into the bathtub.

I’ve spent some trying to recall some memories of my sister. I know she was a very loving sister. She took me shopping a lot. She actually bought us a Super Nintendo when it first came out. We started with Super Mario World. I was pretty little then, maybe around four? One of my biggest regrets was giving it to my cousins when I got older.

One time, she was driving my brother and I back from the mall, at least that’s I’m guessing. Where else would we be traveling from on the interstate back to the restaurant? I remember she was driving, and my brother and I were both sitting in the car having fun playing with the windshield wipers. Thinking back, this was a very dangerous thing to play with in the car. Watching the windshield wiper fluid splatter across the windshield had a magical effect. Eventually, my sister realized the safety concern behind this and she had to stop us from continuously pushing the button. I was quite disappointed.

One time she was helping me take a bath. This was kinda scary, and I guess funny at the same time. Apparently I didn’t want to get into the bathtub, even though I was already naked. She mimicked these scissors with her fingers, and that terrified me. Terrified me enough to get into the tub. What else was she gonna snip? I had an overactive imagination as a four year old.

Hmm it’s kind of difficult to remember what my childhood was like with her. It seems like smaller memories right now. I do have one special memory, in a way, of her, but I’ll share that one later on. For tonight, these two memories will have to do.

Playtime with my big brother

My older brother really like G.I. Joe. I’m talking about the G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero from the 80s. While he liked the action hero Joe, I was more into Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. What can I say? I was like 3 years old and he was around 7. Turtles who eat pizza and use ninja swords were much cooler than G.I.’s shooting guns (I actually liked watching the G.I. Joe movies when I became his age, like G.I. Joe: The Movie and The Revenge of Cobra mini-series).

The cool thing about my brother was when we played games with his G.I. Joe and Cobra action figures. We had this fun way of making all the action figures fight each other by piling them all together and kinda tossing them like fried rice in a large wok. Except we’d use our hands to toss them about, not spatulas and tongs. The crazy rattling noise of the plastic soldiers mashing together got me really excited. After about 30 seconds of this non-stop tossing, the battle was pretty much over. I can’t really remember how my Ninja Turtles were involved with the frenzy; maybe they sat these games out since the Ninja Turtle action figures were much bigger then the little Joe’s.

We also had our own little secret, and I’m not sure if our parents or older siblings ever found out. Since we didn’t have any toy buildings or other structures for our Joe’s to hide in, we would bring in sticks from outside into the bedrooms. He would construct these elaborate stick houses for the G.I. Joe’s and we would use those as either defense walls or some kind of fortitude between Cobra and G.I. Joe. Afterwards, instead of throwing the sticks back outside, we would hide them under the bed. Obviously, our parents and older siblings could see the twigs and branches sticking out, so what’s the solution? Place pillows all around the base of the bed frame to hide the sticks. No one would suspect a thing.