Life In The Oyster

The Many Adventured of My Family

So grampa asked for stories about my large family that will fit into a small country. Um, I don't have any. NOt really. I could always tell the Fletcher stories, but they're kinda all the same. Someone comes up with some stupid idea that no sane person would ever do, and Fletcher, not being sane, does it.

Idea and Author:
1. Stick beads up your nose. Anastasia
2. Tie the sled to the clothesline pole and sled down the hill. Anastasia
3. Split open a spray paint can with a trowel. Bethany
4. Climb up on the roof to get his glove. Jackson but I'm told that I'm the one that threw it up there.

I know there were more, but those are the ones that I remember off the top of my head.

Consequences:
1. Bead gets stuck, and he has to go to the hospital.
2. The chain didn't reach to the bottom of the hill, so the sled stops, Fletcher keeps going, sliding on his face til he gets to the driveway which is gravel and has no snow on it. He had a scrape right up his nose.
3. This one he decided to try when my mom wasn't home, for obvious reasons. He hates me. So as Bethany is yelling at him that she was only kidding and to stop beating on the can, the can explodes and he's covered in green paint. I've just read a book about a boy who's brother put spray paint in his eyes and made him blind, and being the encouraging sister that I am, I tell him this. Ten minutes later my mom gets home and is NOT happy and Fletcher gets his face scrubbed off with a brillo pad. All the while Bethany is crying that she told him not to do it, that she was joking.
4. So, apparently, I threw his glove up on the roof. It's fairly flat, jsut enough slope for the rain to run off, so he climbs up a ladder that doesn't quite reach the roof to retrieve it. But the ladder doesn't quite reach the roof and so he's too scared to get back down. The rest of us, seeing history in the making, run upstairs and lock all the windows that face the roof, so he can't crawl in that way. So he sits on the roof crying for a half hour while we play, until my mom figures out something is up and comes outside. Imagine her surprise to find Fletcher up on the roof crying. I don't think she was very surprised at all. The rest of us can't understand why he doesn't just drop off the edge of the roof, it's only about six feet up.

We don't really pull a lot of pranks all together, although there was a girl that used to stay with us, and we were awful to her. We managed to get ahold of her underwear and we hung it out the windows when she was talking to some guys next door. We were awful to her. We have since apologized.

We told Faith the youngest, that there was a monster in the toilet and then she wouldn't let the bathroom door be all the way shut when she was in there. Anastasia and I told Bethany that there were bad guys in the trash room of our apartment building which was below our parent's bedroom and that they would climb up into their room. Bethany actually only heard half of the scary things I imagined, and Anastasia and I were scared of them too. I had to take the trash down there every day. She didn't know about the guy with the gun hiding in the closet behind daddy's dresser. Anastasia and I wouldn't go back to our room alone when the lights were off.
It's the weirdest thing. I don't mind being outside in the dark. But a dark house gives me the willies. If I'm home alone at night, every light in the house is on, and I avoid windows. My imagination is a curse sometimes.

Oh yeah, and we take crib mattresses and slide on them down the stairs. We pile them up and jump out of the loft. Or we slide down them from the loft to the floor until they collapse and we all fall down. Pre Loft, we threw the matresses over the joists and lay up above the world hiding.

Oh, the only weird thing about having such big family, is days like today, when all three boys are gone with my dad at work, and Bethany is in London, so ther's only three kids home. The house feels so empty, and most families only have three kids to begin with.

Anyway. There you go Grampa, hope you enjoy it.

posted by Marguerite @ 5/16/2006 09:48:00 AM