Family Stories. We all have them.
We talked about stories for a long time on Friday (yesterday).
There's a lot of them. More than I could ever count BUT I did want to record a few.
When I was five or six, my family went to six flags over Georgia and for the first time ever, my father bought all of us souvenirs. My present was a pink and white plastic coin purse/wallet with Tweety Bird on the front and I adored it. I loved it more tha anything I had ever been given. It was my favorite thing, and I clung to it the entire day. After we left the amusement park, we went to eat at Steak and Shake and I became so focused on my deliciously greasy food that I forgot about my new wallet. I ate and ate and then got in the car to leave. We pulled out of the parking lot and got about twenty or thirty or forty minutes into rush hour Atlanta traffic. I looked down at my seat and had an epiphany: I did not have my new Tweety-embossed wallet. I started crying because I had to have it. I cried and cried and my mother and grandma told me to stop. My brothers covered their ears. My two year old sister looked confused. I kept crying. My dad found an exit and turned the car around. He drove back through rush hour traffic in downtown Atlanta to Steak and Shake to get me my wallet. My grandma, who spoiled me worse than anyone else, told him that he was ruining me. But he went back into the restaurant, found my little coin purse, and brought it back to the car. I still have in a desk at home. The downside? My parents tell this story to any of my boyfriends they have ever met.
When my dad was younger, he was a rebel. Or maybe more of a free spirit. He liked to grow his hair out and camp in Arkansas mountains for as long as his mother would (or wouldn't) allow him. He was a little bit of a hippie, sans the drug exposure, and lived his life how he wanted to (I think he is where I got it from). Anyways, one day while hanging out with some of his friends, they decided to streak across a prominent bridge covering a big lake near their houses. For some reason or another, this story was often told when we were growing up (which is probably why all of us children have indulged in some form of exhibitionism such as skinny dipping or running outside in our underwear... or naked). But what happened later erased exactly what happened in Pop's story. One time my grandma came to visit, we all sat in the van driving to the Independence Visitor's Center. My brothers were goofing off, making fun of dad when he was younger, and our grandma kinda joked along, but she was very uptight when it came to Dad so I don't know how much she was actually laughing. Then one of my brothers (I can't remember which one) dropped the big one: He said "Like when Dad went streaking on such-and-such bridge". The van was silent for a minute and then Grandma said, "You did WHAT?!!!"
My brother Josh has a temper. He's always had it. My family was never the biggest fan of board games, but now they are all but outlawed in our family. One Sunday or Monday night when I was in elementary school, my family sat playing a game of Life or Monopoly and Josh was losing. Josh kept losing. He kept losing and we kept making fun of him. Eventually he got so fed up he overturned the board, scattered the game across the room, yelled at us and ran to his bedroom. He got in trouble (He couldn't have been more than 11 or 12) and now board games are never played at our house, and now I never want to play them when my friends or roommates suggest we do.
My two older brothers and I were all born within 4 years of each other, and my sister was born 4 years after me. 8 years after her, my brother Noah was born, quickly followed by David two years later. David is atrociously spoiled but incredibly adorable. As the baby, he got more attention that anyone ever could imagine. As a baby, he crawled every after my 18 year old brother Nathan and basked in happiness whenever Nathan held him. He wasn't even one when Nathan left for his mission, but he still adores Nathan, as all children do. That's not the point of the story though. When David was about 16 months old, our family had some miscommunication about who was watching him. He couldn't have been left alone for more than five or ten minutes and he was quickly found. He was found sitting on the table halfway through a box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts, covered in glaze and chocolate and sprinkles. He was the happiest baby in the world, and was furious when we took the doughnuts away... And now that he's 7, he still has a massive sweet tooth, especially for Krispy Kreme doughnuts.
My younger brother is the most adorable, sweet child I have ever met. I was 12 when he was born, and to a girl who had just grown out of the age children play with dolls, I found myself with a real live baby doll. I took him with me everywhere. I wanted to hold him all the time. I did not like to share him, except when he was screaming. My sister was 8 at the time, and he cried a lot more when she held him than when I did. One night-- Christmas Eve, when Noah was almost 2 months old, Anna grabbed him when he was serenely sitting. I wanted him, so I snatched him from her. We were standing in the hallway and I fight ensued between us. During the fight, one or the other scratched his newborn forehead and gave him a bloody scab between his eyebrows. We weren't allowed to hold him the rest of the night, and I bawled because I thought we had permanently scarred him (we didn't). Now freshly 10 years old, Noah still loves to hear the story about how he got his first battle scars.
At the end of this past summer, I ended a relationship. It was at least the 3rd time I'd ended it, even though we'd never been exclusive with each other. His name was David. And it was just an interesting, weird relationship that dragged on off and on for over a year, when it should have played out in 1 or 2 months or even weeks. Anyway, he'd met my family members that had come down to visit when we were seeing each other, so about 6 months before our relationship ended he'd become Facebook "friends" with my little sister, Anna. Anyway, when I ended our quasi-relationship for the final time, I de-friended him on facebook (I figured I'd had 2 or 3 guys to it to me in my past... I could do it to him too). Later I told my mom what I had done and she told my sister who joyously texted me saying she was proud of me because he was not cool enough for me and then she vindictively de-friended him as well. Fast forward a month later: I had talked to David a few more times in random run-ins and I thought we could be friends again, so I re-added him to facebook. Later that night, however, I ran into him and wound up saying to him that we were done done done and used a few choice words in the process. I got on facebook the next day to delete pictures I had up of the two of us and in the process saw that he had BLOCKED me from facebook. I laughed really hard about it at first, and then it really bugged me. I soon told my family about it and they made so much fun of me! Even though they were so so glad I ended the relationship once and for all (they didn't like him because he was usually a jerk to me), they still make fun of me for getting myself blocked from someone's facebook... I don't think they'll ever let me live it down in the world of cyber friendships.
Also a note about BYU traditions: We heard the victory bell ringing while walking home today.
