TheBanyanTree: About My Brother

[Jeri Xiques]

 One day while my little brother and I were playing in our Galveston yard, I 
made my brother eat ants.  He was probably 3 and I would have been about 5 
at the time.  There were some tiny little black ants marching in a wiggly 
line from wherever they came from, into my mom's kitchen.  Well, I don't 
know if those particular ants intended to visit Mom's kitchen, but others 
just like them did all the time.  Mom complained that she could never get 
rid of them; she called them "sugar ants."

 I don't know what possessed me to think he should eat ants, but I guess I 
did, and so after I hit him a few times, he scooped up some in his hand and 
put them on his tongue.  But it was only a few.  And he didn't get sick. 
And I don't remember getting in trouble for it.

Thankfully, Don doesn't remember the incident...he's bigger than I am now.
>
> Jeri
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Laura" <wolfljsh at gmail.com>
> To: <thebanyantree at remsset.com>
> Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2009 3:47 PM
> Subject: Re: TheBanyanTree: Today's Post: About My Brother
>
>
>> On 29 Jan 2009 at 11:45, Monique Colver wrote:
>>
>>> I was 13 when Jeff was born, a fine age to take care of a baby
>>
>> My oldest brother was 13 when I was born.  My youngest brother was 12. 
>> My sister was 9.
>> (and yet, to this day, my mother swears I was not an accident.  however, 
>> my dad got a
>> vasectomy within months of my birth.  you figure it out...)
>>
>> Every day the three of them would race home after school to see who got 
>> to take Baby
>> Laura out in the stroller for a walk.  I was the bestest toy Mom ever 
>> brought them.
>>
>> My brothers played with me constantly.  I don't mean "played with" as in 
>> "let's play a game
>> together", I mean "played with" as in "here, catch the baby!"  I was 
>> frequently a football.
>> Yeah - still have the scar on my eyebrow from the two stitches *that* 
>> required.
>>
>> One of our favorite games was pillow.  I dunno if we called it that, but 
>> that's how I remember
>> it.  I would stand at one end of the room, and my brothers would sit at 
>> the other end.  I would
>> try to run across the room and jump on one of them.  If I successfully 
>> tackled either one of
>> them, I won.  Sounds easy, right?  No.  We had these big ol' floor 
>> pillows that were at least
>> two and a half feet square, and five inches thick.  Solid foam, covered 
>> with a blue and green
>> plaid.  I think we had three of them, but maybe there were only two. 
>> Anyway, the
>> complicated part of the game was that as I was trying to run across the 
>> room, they were
>> zinging the pillows at my knees.  I'm not sure I ever won.  I know I 
>> ended up, more often
>> than not, face down on one of those pillows.  The would take me out just 
>> below the knees,
>> and I would flop forward right in the middle of the pillow.  Great fun!
>>
>> Great fun until a pillow only hit one leg, or hit too high, and I fell 
>> sideways onto the concrete
>> floor, or flopped over backwards onto the hearth.  Granted, the floor was 
>> covered with
>> carpet, but it was that old 1970's 'indoor-outdoor' carpet that was about 
>> 1/8 of an inch thick.
>> It hardly qualified as padding.
>>
>> Sometimes I'd pop right back up, shake it off, and we'd continue playing. 
>> Sometimes I'd
>> cry.  The boys have since commented that "the game always ended with 
>> Laura crying".  It's
>> funny, I don't remember the crying part, but I remember how fun the games 
>> were.
>>
>> My Mom finally gave up worrying.  I think she went all Nietzsche on us. 
>> "What doesn't kill
>> her, makes her stronger."  She was right.  :)
>>
>> -- 
>> Laura
>> wolfljsh at gmail.com
>> http://wolfsinger.wordpress.com
>>
>>
>