Bed Time

 

Day Twelve: Dark Clouds on the (Virtual) Horizon

Today’s Prompt: Write a post inspired by a real-world conversation.Today’s twist: include an element of foreshadowing in the beginning of your post.

 

My sister and I shared a room growing up  – at least most of our growing up years.  I moved into the garage when I was in high school.  When I say moved into the garage – it’s most likely not what you think.  We had a two car garage – that became a one car garage.  My dad sectioned off a 5×12 section and built two walls to join with the existing walls of the garage.   It was one of the best things that happened to me in my childhood.  I painted the room bright yellow and we got a dark blue carpet remnant. It didn’t matter to me at all that you could barely fit the bed and dresser – it was mine.  All mine.  I absolutely loved having my own space.

But, before that my sister and I always shared a room. When we were younger we got along for the most part. Until we didn’t.  Bedtime was always 9pm. We would get into bed and my mom would come in and say our prayers with us. She would turn the light off and all would be quiet…for a few minutes.  Then one of us would quietly say, “Bbbrrring…Bbbrring.”  Giggles would ensue and we would hope mom didn’t hear us.  The other would say, “Hello?”  And then we would proceed to have long lengthy conversations.

I, being the eldest by six years, was always the rich sister.  My sister would beg and plead to be the rich sister, but I held fast to my title.  She would succumb and play the part of the poor sister.  She would ask me for things and I would sometimes give and other times not.

I’m kind of mortified I’m even telling you about this – I kind of want to tell you I was the nice younger sister and my mean older sister was bossy and demanding.  But, with my luck, my younger sister would read this and yeah…Guess I’ll just eat my cake.  No, that’s not how it goes.  What’s that saying you say when you have to just man up and take your consequences?  I can’t remember.  Anyway, I’ll just have to do that.

So, we would giggle and whisper until my mom would yell down the hallway for us to be quiet and go to sleep.  We would lay so quiet – for a couple of minutes.  Then, “Bbbbbring…Bbbbring,” one of us would begin.  On and on we would go until by the third or fourth time we knew by my mom’s tone she meant business.

During one of those conversations my sister named her pretend triplet girls, April, May and June.  I loved that and promptly told her I was going to name my triplet girls that in real life.  For the next years we argued about it. It wasn’t just a little argument.  I was huge.  Serious stuff.  I insisted that since I was older I would have babies first and so they were my names. She insisted she thought of it and I couldn’t do that.

It wasn’t until many, many years later we realized: A. The likelihood of one of us having triplet girls was extremely unlikely.  B. The likelihood of us both having triplet girls was even more unlikely.  C. In the event either of us did have triplet girls we probably wouldn’t choose months of the year.

And as it turned out – neither of us had triplet girls.

And my married last name is Beach.  April Beach, May Beach and June Beach.  Nope.  Not a chance.

She also was passionate that when she got married I would have to move out of the room because her husband was going to sleep on the top bunk bed.

And that never happened either.

Somehow much of what was seriously important as a kid turned out to be not so much when we grew up.  Come to think about it – much of what is seriously important to me today probably won’t matter so much in ten years. Or even in five.