I’m the youngest of my family.  The baby.  Or as I was known – Bibbity Bobert.  In my family, it goes girl, boy, girl, me.  And in my family, life was pretty damn tough.  It wasn’t enough that we were dirt poor or that we dressed in the leftovers from the Salvation Army.  In the cosmic scheme of things, I guess it wasn’t enough that the other kids laughed, teased, and bullied us.  No, there had to be more.  And that ‘more’ was my dad and my mom.  They were two of a kind and by that I mean that there have never been two people more poorly suited to parenthood.  Somehow they found each other and created the lot of us.

No child asks for it.  Its completely the luck of the draw.  Or bad luck, I guess.  I think back to my childhood and shake my head at the feelings that I remember being as constant as the night stars.  Fear, sadness, insecurity.  I know that I was lucky somehow.  My siblings coped the worst of it.  Somehow I was spared.  Maybe it was because I was the baby of the family.

My oldest sister was the favorite target of my dad, probably because the marriage didn’t last long enough even the second time around for him to really put his attention on the other kids.  She got beatings, ridicule, and other things.  Things that would get my dad’s teeth knocked out if I ever ran across him today.  She was the oldest and she took the blame for everything.  She wasn’t treated like a daughter as much as a maid, a nanny, and a serving girl.  There are gaps in her memory – blank spots that she can’t recall.  She tells me there are times she remembers fleeing from my dad’s approach only to be trapped in a corner.  He looms over her with balled fists and that’s it.  She doesn’t remember what happened after that.  Despite all of it, she tried as hard as she could to be the best daughter possible.  Any failure, real or imagined, she took personally.

Randy, my brother, took the brunt of his physical torment from my dad.  I saw him kicked to the head while we were trying to clean up the Army base house in California.  The kids at school were relentless on him, too.  My brother is crazy smart, genius smart, and he always stood up for himself with a sharp wit.  Of course, we were smaller than other kids and his defiance often took a heavy toll.  The worst of it though was probably the psychological assault that both of my parents put on him.  Endless, daily.  When he was in elementary school, he was locked in the outdoor cellar for over an hour by my dad, because he believed that there were monsters down there.  I heard stories about my brother’s heart piercing cries as he clawed at the door in terror.  Later on in his life, my mom besieged him with comparisons to the monster she had married, “you’re just like your father” and “why don’t you hit me and make yourself feel like a real man.”  How can a boy grow into manhood with such statements?  Somehow, he has.

Wendy, the next youngest, took the worst of it in my opinion.  She went through two phases in her life.  She started off being a torture pet for my dad.  One time he dragged her to the front yard by her hair and cut it all off with a pair of kitchen shears, because she didn’t brush it enough.  Our neighbors were horrified.  She was seven years old.  That was my dad’s sense of angry justice.  Later in life after the big split, she became the target of my mom.  I guess the boys in the family were too big by that time for my mom to muscle, so the daughter in 9th grade sufficed.  I’ve never seen a beating like the one she endured, curled up in a ball and whimpering for help, not on any schoolyard.  You’d never even whip an animal like she was beaten that day.  My mom had the audacity to wear a wrist bandage the day after because she had apparently sprained it on Wendy’s skull.

Yet somehow I was spared the worst of it.

Trishie

My oldest sister was like a second momma to me.  I call her Trishie.  When I was baby, there wasn’t much interest in changing me from my parents.  I’ve heard stories from multiple sources about how I would have rash so bad that there would be blood in my diapers.  My little behind would be raw with skin hanging freely with dried clumps of poo.  When my grandma visited, she’d change me.  Sometimes my Aunt Thim, as well.  I know that neglect from an early age can have a lasting impact on the development of a child.  The feeling of hollowness where early love should have been.  I can bet that my siblings had the same experience.  Yet I was spared the worst of it.  Trishie adopted me as her baby when she was old enough.  She carried me around on her hip, changing my clothes, giving me all the hugs and kisses little babies need.

When I was in college, struggling with bills and tuition, Trishie would call.  Just to check on me.  Just to see how I was doing.  She wasn’t rich, just a teacher in Tulsa, but she remembered how tough it had been for her without anyone to help.  She’d drive down and take me shopping for brand name clothes like the other guys in the fraternity would wear.  Or she’d take me to a dealership and pick out a car for me and make all the payments.  And all the insurance.  And even give me money to go out to eat or buy gas.  Hell, she even adopted one of my best friends as another little brother – taught him how to drive in her car.

But that was my Big Sis.

Life hasn’t always been kind to her.  She had learned through too many poundings to count to be a doormat, to never stand up for herself.  Never had a shred of self confidence, but there was a fire in there.  She got that from my grandma.  You could see it most easily on the softball field.  Then look out, boy.  She’d throw you out from the outfield if you weren’t Herschel Walker.  Her senior year she batted over .500.  The coach told her she was no good and she never had the confidence to try out for college softball until she was finishing up a fifth year on her education degree.  The head coach of the team pulled my grandma aside and said, “if I could only have had Trish as a freshman, she’d have been amazing.”  In all other instances though, Trishie knew that she was no good and just accepted the lot that was given to her with a shrug of her shoulders and a lowered head.  But there was one line that you never crossed …

You never messed her Bibi Brudda.  That was me.

I was in eighth grade.  I had long hair, stoner kid with ripped up jeans.  Kids manifest their grief in the most visible ways and that was mine.  We took a trip to Frontier City in OKC.  A nice day, riding the rides, taking silly pictures, and the rest.  Towards the end of the day, I was walking out front and the rest of my family casually following from behind.  I passed two kids, older kids, that were snickering at me.  I knew at once they were telling a private joke about the Cousin It with buck teeth.  When you grow up like I did, you develop a sixth sense for when you’re the butt of the joke.  I turned to look at them to confirm it.  Just as I did, my big sister stepped up out the crowd, hearing what they were saying behind my back, and walloped one of them straight in the chest.  Boom!  “Shut your mouth!” she roared.  They looked at her as if she was the kraken risen from the deep.  I was her Bibi Brudda.

Randy

Every boy needs a hero.  And my big brother was mine. Has any kid ever looked up to his big brother with as much reverence and awe in his eyes than I did?  Can’t be possible.  I did everything I could to be made in his image.  Everything he liked, I liked.  He taught me to love books.  He taught me to embrace my imagination.  To dream of big things and never be ashamed of it.  By the time I was 12 years old, I’d conquered kingdoms and slain dragons.  All with my brother painting the pictures in my head. You know he used to read to my every night until I was nearly a teenager.  He’d always pick the books he had already read.  You know why?  Because he loved them so much that he couldn’t wait to share them with me.  He would read them in funny voices for each of the characters … and thunk me on the head when I’d fall asleep, of course.

My brother is the reason I am a writer.

We’d play all day, all summer, either at D&D or in the backyard as Hulk & Spiderman.  Each Christmas night, he’d jump into bed with me so we could wake up and go unwrap our presents together.  Oh sure, he’d whoop me.  Sometimes real good, too.  We were two boys and what else do boys do?  What he didn’t know was that I sometimes overheard him bragging to his friends about me.  Telling them how tough I was for being so young, so little.  Or sometimes he’d pick up my notebook of poetry and read it, then go secretly boast to everyone else about the stuff I was thinking up.  He didn’t want to do these things when I could see it, but I knew he was proud.  I might get a big head.  And its the big brother’s job to keep the little guy in line.

Like my Big Sister, he had a keen eyes for whenever I was given the short end.  My grandma once asked my dad to clear her back patio of leaves.  Loads of leaves, oodles of leaves.  Wet and heavy.  My dad recruited my brother and I to work with him.  Armed with rakes and shovels we set to work.  I was excited to work with the big boys and eager to prove my worth.  I shoveled as hard as I could.  My dad watched over our progress, mostly leaning on his rake.  When we finished, my grandma slipped my dad a $20 bill.  He informed us that he’d get $10 and my brother and I would get $5 each.

Wait a second.  My brother, ten years old, stopped him.  Stopped the monster.  Robert should get the most money.  Why? my father grumbled, clearly irritated.  Because he worked the hardest.  And that’s how the money was split.

There was another time when we were playing in a ditch on a gravel road.  My brother, my middle sister, and me.  I probably was barely in school at the time, 1st grade if even that.  It had one of those storm drain, circular tunnels going under it.  As we were playing, we were beset by a hail of rocks.  Some of the other kids, kids my brother’s age, were pelting us with large pieces of gravel.  My sister and I were only little, so we hid in the drain.  Afraid.  But my big brother stepped out into the assault and walked towards them, fearless.  As if he were determined to either beat back these kids from hurting us or at the very least draw their fire.  As he walked forward, calmly but purposefully, he was struck in the face with a rock.  His forehead started bleeding, a trickle down the side of his head.  But he kept on walking.  The other kids freaked out and ran their little butts home.  They’d never seen anything like that before.

I’d never seen anything like that before.  That’s the kind of thing that heroes do.

Wendy

We had been taught to hate each other as kids by our parents, playing favorites against one another.  When my parents split up, my mom eventually ended up in Abilene.  Trish stayed with my grandma and the rest of went with my mom.  I was shown in a myriad of ways that my middle sister was not as good as the rest of us.  For whatever reason.  She was the least of the least.  That’s what I was taught.  Let me give you an example.  When we lived down in Abilene, my sister’s birthday came up.  August.  She got no party, no celebration, just a 2-liter of coke and a pizza.  My birthday rolled up in October – presents, cake, party.  How is that fair?  How did she not resent and hate me for it?

Despite all of it, Wendy tried her hardest to be my friend.  She learned to play D&D, eager at the chance day or night.  She read the same books.  She took me to see movies with her own money saved up, bought me treats and candy.  Anything she could do.  Hell, she even talked up my brother and I to her only two friends in high school so that we could have girlfriends.  Find me another sister that did that?  Particularly, to two boys that picked on her so much.

Eventually, I let her in and you know what?  I found out that Wendy is a great partner in crime.  For two big reasons.  One, she’s got the most infectious laugh I’ve ever heard.  And she makes it readily available.  Once this girl gets going, look out.  I’ve seen her collapse in complete exhaustion because she can’t stop giggling.  And when she laughs, I laugh, too.  I can’t help it.  And she laughs at practically everything I say.  I can’t be this funny … she’s got to be pretending … everything reaps huge giggles, chortles, and chuckles.  As a result, I do anything I can to make her laugh, such as the time I pretended to be Gandalf fighting against a Balrog made up of my farts.  Real stinkers, too.  I used the air freshener as my staff, pounding it into the ground and yelling, “You Shall Not Have Gas!” Giggles, giggles, giggles.

The other reason is that she embraced whatever I wanted to do with full commitment.  If I wanted to play Legos, we’d build an entire Army base to amazing detail, complete with desks, waste baskets, and doorknobs.  For my high school graduation trip, we went camping across the Southwest.  Wendy financed all of my equipment – a new sleeping bag, tent, and hiking boots – without even so much as a peep.  If I went to the Renaissance Fair (yes, I am a nerd), she’d show up in full garb, braided hair, and a fully developed persona.  Hell, she even chose the same Medieval culture that I did, just so we could say we were related inside the Renaissance Fair, as well, as in real life.

All she wanted was to be my friend.  And she truly is.

… And Then There Was Me

I look at the others in my family, my brother and two sisters, and I can see the struggles that they have endured as they have tried to shed the emotional baggage placed in their hearts by such a hard upbringing.  I see it and I feel guilty.  For some reason, I didn’t have those types of struggles.  At least, not to that degree.  I played sports like Trishie.  I honed my imagination like Randy.  I made friends like Wendy.

We’re all adults now.  My sisters each have daughters of their own – beset with tickles, hugs, and kisses.  My brother has twins on the way.  I’m just amazed by each of them, amazed and humbled.  Their triumphs are all the more inspiring to me, because I witnessed first hand how little help they had along the way.  I saw how terrible things were for each of them for so long.  Could I have made it under the same circumstances?  Would I have been as strong as they?

I’ll never know and thankfully so.  Somehow I was spared the worst of it. I must have been lucky.  Maybe I was blessed.  Or maybe I had a guardian looking out for me, protecting me.  Someone that made sure that I made it, an angel.

Or maybe I had three.