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| Paul and Melanie and me. And the dog. If I am two years old here, Melanie is seven and Paul is eight. |
When I was little my next two older siblings took it upon themselves to really torment me. Melanie had been the only girl in the family (after five boys) for five years. She may have gotten a fair amount of attention in our family. And then I had to come along and spoil everything—not just a new baby in the house, but a new girl baby! So maybe Melanie had some excuse. A little.
There was no excuse for Paul. Yet those two ganged up on me when it came to teasing, or to making sure all of the games always went in their favor (and, face it; they were five and six years older than me; they had to be really good at this), or just excluding me from their games altogether. And while I mostly felt sad about Melanie—well, sadness alternating with frustration—I don't remember fighting with her. (She might have a different story to tell.) But I do remember fighting back with Paul at least twice.
First, I have an example of the utter meanness of Paul...because I am petty like that. 😉
Aside from the every-day annoyances I listed before, there was one day when these two older siblings told me I had to clean my whole bedroom...by myself! (This in itself seemed like the height of cruelty to a little girl.) So I worked on it. Every now and then I'd call them in to see how clean the room was, but every time they pointed out something else that I had to do—which I did, although not happily and probably not without some murmuring. Finally the room was really, really clean. I called them back in for one last time, and Paul dumped the contents of the laundry hamper in the middle of the floor and told me I wasn't finished; the room was still messy. Oooh! I hated Paul!
(By the way, I really am over that now.)
Anyway, I "fought back" with Paul at least twice that I can remember.
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| Paul looked like this when these stories took place. So he was between...what? Ten to twelve? Maybe thirteen? Which made me four to seven years old. |
The first time, he was holding me in his lap in my mom's rocking chair. I don't know why, but given my reaction, I wonder if he was restraining me for some reason. Anyway, I don't remember what I was mad about, but I tweaked his nose, he let go of me, and I ran out the front door. I just knew there would be terrible repercussions, but when he didn't chase after me I just had to go back into the house and see what was up. And there was Paul, in the rocking chair, with a bloody nose! He told me that I was going to be in big trouble, but I don't think anything more came of that incident.
I recollected my second "fight" with Paul a few nights ago...well, early one morning. I was laying there in my bed, trying to get warm enough to fall back asleep after being up and about the house in the wee, small hours of the night. And as I lay there this little memory popped into my head and struck me as particularly funny. I was trying not to giggle...to the point of almost holding my breath, when finally it just had to escape, and I burst out laughing! So then I ended up having to tell Bruce about my naughtiness, which was this:
I don't remember why, but once again I was really mad at Paul. So I drew a picture of a poop ( my five...maybe six-year-old's rendering of what I thought of my big brother...) and left it on his pillow. Ha! I sure showed him!
Once again he told me how bad I was, and that I was going to get in a lot of trouble for that, and then nothing more came of it.
Well, we were pretty little then. When Paul and Melanie got to be teenagers they had a group of friends their age and didn't pay enough attention to me to torment me any more.
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| My cousin, Nolan, on the back left; Paul is next to him. Then me, Melanie, and our little sister, Denise, in front. I was eleven and had friends of my own, and Paul and Melanie were teenagers; peace reigned. |
By the time I got to be a teenager Paul and Melanie and I were all friends. In fact, after Melanie got married, Paul and I were best friends—at least he was mine. When I went away to school at USU, he went there too. We hung out together so much that people thought we were boyfriend and girlfriend.
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| Paul and me, picnicking, on one of our many road-trips to and from USU. (Man! We were young and good-looking!) |
We hung out together a lot; I wrote to him on his mission; we were pals.
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| Melanie and Paul with our parents about five years ago. |
Now we're all married with families of our own. I live in Vernal, Utah; Paul lives in American Samoa. We don't see each other, or talk to each other much. But Paul really is a great guy!
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| This is the most recent picture I have of Paul, with—most of—his family. (I stole it from facebook. His daughter, Lita (center) was Miss American Samoa when this picture was taken. His oldest son, Paulo, is living in Utah with his wife Ashlee and their children.) |
I love you, Paul!
