Siblings

I remember back as a kid with my two older sisters.
Mandy was 3 days and 3 years older than me
Vanessa was 2 years older than me.

You'd think Mandy would be the leader in everything we did, but it wasn't ever that way.
Vanessa was always the leader in everything, Mandy was the second opinion and i was the follower.

They would play girl games together with no boys allowed, and i told them that i'd run away
from home. I would pack a Baltimore Orioles tote bag full of toys like i was moving out, and i'd do it full view of them to see my phony intentions. THen i'd go hide somewhere, usually inside of the toy chest in the basement family room and wait for them to get worried, to miss me, and eventually come find me.

I don't know exactly how children percieve time, but i wasn't any different at age, so what could have been realistically 10 minutes, may have felt like 2 hours or so, maybe even a day.
And when no one came running to find me, i would climb out of that toy chest squinting at the bright light and bitter with being un noticed.

Mandy was also the one that always had to be different. While us other kids drank chocolate milk (The only sugar afforded to us) she would stick to plain white. While we would have spaghetti sauce on our pasta, she would have hers plain with butter.
Her color always seemed to be yellow too, yellow blankets, shirts, cups, plates.
She loved music and art and was quite accomplished with them.
Now she's divorced with three kids and living at my parents house. SHe had a successful position in administration and is quickly climbing the corporate ladder.

Vanessa was always athletic, polite, smart, always seemed to win at board games no matter what, kept an inventory of all the candy she would stockpile from halloween,parties, stocking stuffers, etc. And when i would actually steal some on occassion, she would actually confront me with a hand written list of what she had in stock and how much on a clipboard! Her fave color seemed to be red and blue.
She also had a bad habit of sucking her thumb and it resulted in her having to get a head gear apparatus which we made funof her so much for, then braces, where we still made fun of her, and then a retainer, which we still made fun of her for. Hey, she had it coming being Miss perfect!
Now she's a doctor working her practice in Ohio and married.

And then there's me, i'll keep it short.
Iliked the color green so all my stuff was usually green.
I always liked playing with action figures, and soldiers, and toy guns.
Occassionally even Vanessa would jump into the games with us boys and pick up a stick or sword or gun and have at it. Even though all the kids in the neighbhorhood were boys and my sisters still hung out with us, the fact that for once in my life there were more boys than girls felt empowering! It didn't matter if my sisters opposed me, if i had more than enough friends backing me up, they couldn't touch me. Well until we all became teenagers, then kicking and punching kind of came into effect.

I joined the army at 17, served for 4 years, went to Ireland, Germany, Spain, Greece as stop overs for deployments to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq. I was married for 3 years before divorcing her.
I now am an administrative assistant at an office, have a 4 year old daughter, and a wife of 15 months married, 6 years together.