Monday, December 26, 2011

Being the oldest

One of my shipmates is about my age and had a number of siblings that he had to share things with as a kid.
I am the oldest of an entire generation and had, in addition to four siblings had a busload of younger cousins to rain God knows what down on.
I got kidded a couple of years back about the time I took one of my cousins for a ride in my MGB. I was about 17 at the time and he was about 10 years younger. He asked me how fast we were going and instead of pointing to the speedometer, I pointed to the tachometer and told we were going 350 mph or something like that.
It was funny watching the wide eyed cousin tell my uncle that I had driven 350 miles per hour. My uncle suppressed a smirk and said, “Three hundred and fifty, huh? That’s pretty fast!”
My cousin then ran around to all of the other cousins bragging that Cousin Pic had driven him around the block at 350 mph.
My shipmate recalled the time he was watching ‘Lassie’ with his sisters and of course Lassie was in hot water. His weepy-eyed sisters were sobbing that some cougar was getting ready to eat Lassie when he came to the rescue.
“Next week they’re going to show how Timmy trains the mountain lion that ate Lassie,” he explained, in a particularly evil tone. Of course the girls burst into tears.
I remember telling my kid brother the day before he started first grade that if he didn’t behave himself that he’d get beaten by two big guys in the office. I think I was going into third grade at the time.
He got scared and went to my father and asked him and Dad set him straight and found me and whacked me for doing that.
He then gave me a lecture on how I should encourage my brother and so on.
A minute after my dad left my brother happened by. It took more than a whack to make me contrite.
“It’s really three guys that beat you,” I whispered. “Dad just doesn’t want you to be scared until you get there.”
He was pretty shaky the first couple of days at school but he survived.



my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/

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