We may truly believe in the accuracy of our memories, only to discover years later that our version of what happened disagrees with the versions of others who were there. This can be particularly true of children who blindly trust others and who tend to take things literally. Children whose older siblings tease or use scare tactics may have memories of what was told them or what was impressed on their emotions rather than what really happened.
Having two older sisters who sometimes worked together in creating impressions on me, I had some ‘memories’ that were later “put to the test” and found wanting. In laying the foundation for one particular story, however, it seems reasonable to relate things that they did to me before my memory kicked in. As you read this, please, keep in mind that all is told in sisterly love… for they have long since been forgiven.
My birth weight was guessed by the country doctor who delivered me as he hefted me up in his hands….. twelve pounds! (As you can imagine, even if he were off by a pound, I must have been a very large baby). As my mother became strong enough to take on her household duties, she relied a great deal on my sisters to keep watch over me. They probably did as good a job as any six and seven-year-olds could do, but the imaginations of the two together sometimes led them to try things that one, alone, might not try.
A proposed fun thing to do was to put me into our rural mailbox. Here, my weight turned out to be a blessing. As they tried to stuff me into the box, I was too big…. but that’s not the end of the story! They weren’t satisfied to give up on such a neat idea, so they ran to tell our mother that they had stuffed me into the box and couldn’t get me out. Needless to say, Mother was not nearly so thrilled with their joke as they imagined she would be, even after she saw that I was not harmed.
Another before-memory escapade that must be told concerns two china-head dolls that belonged to my sisters. They had each received a doll, of which they were extremely proud, so there was no need for jealousy. Right? Well, so it was in the beginning, but dolls with china heads are quite fragile, and it was not surprising that one of them got broken.
The tragedy happened at the hands of the doll’s owner so she could not blame anyone else, but she could be jealous that her sister still had a doll. In fact, she was so jealous she plotted to have baby sister “accidentally” break the surviving doll. After laying the doll down on a hard surface, my envious sister placed a stick into my small hands and instructed me to hit the doll. She had not counted on my inability to hit the doll hard enough to break it, so she did what she had to do… she broke it herself! Naturally, the owner was told that I had broken her doll, and that account was believed for several years. I ‘learned’ of the wrongdoing when I was about ten years old, as we were riding home from the funeral of a young cousin. The seriousness of the occasion must have pricked an over-burdened conscience, for the guilty sister made a full confession!
Memories of ‘sister abuse’ all center around my fifth and sixth years. The reality of ‘mad dogs’ gave rise to scaring little sister over any strange dog that came around. Once a dog wandered into the school building where some of us were playing, and one of my sisters declared that the dog had rabies. I was duly terrified and clambered to safety where I remained until the dog had gone on its way.
Sometimes fears that are impressed on children make them overly fearful as adults, but I had the story of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” to help me develop a “wait and see” attitude. I was also blessed with a very practical mother whose calmness allayed many fears that were self-induced as well as those projected by others.
It is with good feelings that I recall my family and our rural Alabama home. The cotton patch is one identity of those years, but for now there are several sister stories left to tell.
This is the eleventh basic article of “From the Cotton Patch”. As a grandmother, I have seen older siblings tease the younger ones in ways that sometimes seem cruel. I prefer to believe that teasing within the family can help buffer one against trials of teenage and adult years.