my brother and i were pretty awful kids. I picked on him a bit, as the oldest. But mostly we were a team when it came to babysitters, grandparents, and superiors in general.

We could answer the phone in the same voice, pre-puberty, and in fact looked pretty similar too. When we were in a car, there was a game where whenever the car stopped (for a traffic light, stop sign, dog in the road, etc), we'd unbuckle, and with difficulty, move as quickly as possible to the other's side of the backseat. Also, in stores, we'd like to hide from whoever'd brought us, inside the round clothes racks especially.

My grandmother used to have 'kiddie leashes' she'd bought, so we couldn't keep running away. I have this small scene I remember of using my whole weight to drag away from the captured arm, tugging against the leash, while walking along this sidewalk on a bridge with my grandmother. I understood that I shouldn't, but didn't know why. The essential difference between discipline and punishment, or I didn't care. But there was a little yellow flower in the cracks in the pavement just a little too far from the path my grandma had chosen, and I was resentful and longed to stretch a little farther to see it; it was very important.

In my two previous posts I describe pranks we'd participate in related to memory-keeping because keeping diaries and this blog makes me want to write about the idea of remembering more.