Birthday Wishes

Happy happy 20th birthday to my dear brother Jamey.

You're the best! I love you! (and...you were the cutest baby...ever!!!)

Cool Siblings Update

Remember my post about how cool my siblings are? Because I was home for the weekend and had access to lots of photo albums and a scanner, here's some evidence of my geekdom.

exhibit A. The Halloween costumes. I'm obviously the ghost, though it looks like I may belong to some kind of child terrorist group.


exhibit B. At one time, I was 42 inches tall, and I weighed all of 42 pounds. Always a head and a half taller than all my siblings, and scary skinny.


exhibit C. The parents and their three kids. Oh look! They included their babysitter! How nice.

Anecdotes of Language Misuse

The other day I got to thinking about foul language, which is something I usually abuse. People from our generation seem to swear just to swear, for no real reason and without real consequence. This is all well and good, but sometimes we can forget that these are strong words. However, before I get too serious, a good f-word every once in awhile can feel pretty great.

In general, swearing, cursing, dropping f-bombs, anything of the like, is a curious social subject. When you're a kid, you learn from your parents that you should never say "stupid" or "idiot" or (in my house) "dummy". We were banned from even sticking out our tongues (this has to be the reason I get along so well with my siblings, isn't it?). So Catholic. As you get older, however, you begin to learn swears (from different sources of course, older brothers if you were lucky enough, sometimes on the school bus by the kids who have to older brothers...I'll let you take a wild guess as to which one I was). But you cannot swear in front of your parents. You have to hide your new found knowledge from all adults or risk serious punishment, like grounding or detention.

In your formative years, most offensive language must be explained. There are words one might hear and repeat without actually knowing the context or usage. Swears you might hear will mean nothing until someone tells you the word is a bad one. My parents did a good job not swearing in front of us. The only time I ever heard my mother use the "f" word was when we locked ourselves out of the house on the way to somewhere important. The first time I heard an adult swear just to swear was my neighbor, this sweet, generous, motherly woman (I was best friends with her daughter). Their family dog, Coco, had escaped and was running around the yard, and I'll never forget Mrs. R. saying, "Ohh that dog is such a jackass!" I was probably about eight, and thrown quite off guard.

There is one embarrassing story of my younger years involving foul language that far exceeds all of the others. When my brother and I were little (probably under 10) my parents took us to a museum. As a souvenir, I bought a little beanbag turtle that my brother and I decided to name Tit-tit. Again, I wish I was kidding. Upon arrival home from the museum, we decided to play in the yard with our new "pet". We tossed the thing up in the air, singing "Tit-tit! Tit-tit!" We had not the slightest clue of the connotation of the word "tit". My dad came outside and reprimanded us, gently informing us that "tit" was not an appropriate name for a stuffed animal, and he then explained what the slang usage meant. My brother and I solemnly swore to change the turtle's name, but when my dad went back inside, we just shrugged to each other. "I like the name Tit-tit," my brother said. We had never heard the word before, and I agreed. I liked the name's certain ring. We didn't see anything wrong with it.

Good Lord, it will be entertaining to have children.

Confession: My siblings are cooler than me.

Its true. I hate to admit it. My siblings, two younger brothers and a younger sister, are all infinitely cooler than I am. I am a nerd. I have a blog. In every family, there is someone who is pretty, someone who is cool, someone who is smart. Sometimes, if you're really lucky, you'll get a family where everyone is at least two of those attributes, and sometimes (once in a blue moon) everyone will be pretty, smart, and really cool. This is not so in my family. It was apparent from childhood: I was really, really uncool.

My (amazing, wonderful) parents had four kids in seven years, the middle two being only fourteen months apart. I was more responsible at eight than my youngest brother will be in his entire life, but that's just the way eldest children are programmed. But being the oldest by two years was difficult: I was awkward while the three babies were still cute, and even when the middle two started to seem awkward (by some twist of fate...they never seemed to go through that phase in the entirety that I did), I was still awkward.


Us: 1996

It didn't help that I was freakishly tall. There is a family picture of us from when I was in the 8th grade (that makes Jamey in 6th, Brittany in 5th and Harrison in...1st I think), there was a family reunion in which everyone took an individual family picture. Now, let me confide in you that when I was fourteen, I had nearly realized my full size: I was 5' 7" and 150 pounds (a figure that I eventually grew into, don't you worry). My nearest aged siblings, at twelve and eleven, had yet to hit five feet. It looked like the two parents, their three AAAdorable children and me...their...babysitter? I wish I had the picture on my computer to show you. Truly a sad, sad sight.

It stems back even farther than that. When I was about five, I wanted nothing more than to be a ghost for Halloween. My mother, being the kind of mother she is (the one that always allowed freedom of expression), happily obliged me, and fashioned me a ghost costume out of a sheet (yes...a sheet. With eye and mouth holes). Also, being the busy momma she was, she went out and bought costumes for Jamey and Britt, then 3 and 2, respectively. J was a bumble bee. B was a bunny. That Halloween night, when Dad took us trick-or-treating, I could NOT FATHOM why, at every single house we went to, the ladies answering the door SQUEALED: "OoOoOhhh look at the bumble bee! And the BUNNY! AWWWWW!!!" And then, they would hand us candy, and not say a darn thing about me! The ghost!

It took me years to realize it was because a bumble and a bunny are cute. I had a sheet wrapped around my head and tied at my neck with eye holes cut out. NOT CUTE.

Did I mention the term of endearment for me was Stephy-poo, while my sister's was Pretty Britty? That one still hurts.

I was the one with acne. I had bushy eyebrows. I had braces first, I got in trouble for everything first, I was the gargantuan amazon until after my first year of college when my brother FINALLY grew taller than me. I was shy, painfully painfully shy (hard to believe it now, right?), when my sibs were gregarious and sunny, giggling and smiley.

In high school (this is where I get to the cool part) I was a nerd. I had weird friends (who..actually, I'm still friends with...and I love their weirdness! and mine!), I was in the drama club, and I only pretended to like the field hockey team I was on...but I guess its hard to like something if you're completely talentless (I mean...you should have seen me with a field hockey stick. Sad, sad, sad). J and B were not "popular" per say, but they were right on the fringes...many people I went to school with didn't even know my name. Now, J and B are both involved with Greek life on their respective campuses...and we all know how cool THAT is.

But, in the end, I don't care about not being cool. In fact, I bask in it. I accept my nerdyness, and funny thing is, other people do too. And every kid goes through just what I went through, it just took me awhile to realize it. But...some of those things are pretty hilarious.


Us: 2009

Christmas cards: all about the photo

The family Christmas photo. It’s inevitable. Each year, my parents gather the four of us around to take a picture for Christmas cards. It seems simple enough; everyone sits for five minutes while Dad snaps a couple of pictures and then everyone goes on their merry way. For people who send Christmas cards, the point of the picture is, on the surface, to send greetings and holiday wishes to old friends and family with a picture of happy snappy kids. It also might be shameless bragging—“Merry Christmas! By the way, look at how gorgeous my children are! And yes, that mansion behind us is our summer cottage on Nantucket!” I, for one, always laugh at the people who send the card with not only a picture, but an attached novel of a letter detailing the goings-on of the family since the last Christmas: “Joe Jr. scored 27 home runs for his little league team this spring! Sarah won first place at the biggest horse show in the state! And little Billy, we have been told, has and I.Q. of 160! As for Joe Sr. and me, we have been jet-setting around the world, volunteering in India and Cambodia! What an adventure!” Oh boy. Cards that also never fail to make me chuckle are the ones of the token tourist family: Mom and Dad with their fanny packs and the 1-3 children they might have, sunburned and standing in front of the Grand Canyon wearing matching Grand Canyon souvenir t-shirts. Don’t deny it, you know you’ve seen those cards before. But the hands-down best Christmas cards to laugh at are the ones where all the kids are hastily lined up in front of the decorated tree or fireplace lined with stockings, one or more of them might have been crying (their eyes and faces are a bit blotchy), maybe they put a Santa hat on the dog, and you just know it was an all-out battle trying to get this picture. Sometimes this card doesn’t even arrive until after Christmas—it is often postmarked on or after December 23.

My family, for the most part, is of the latter type. My parents insist upon taking a Christmas picture of the four of us every year, no matter what the emotional cost. Yes, picture time at my family residence usually ends up with at least one kid (usually the youngest, HJT, who isn’t even that young anymore) crying, one or both parents and at least two older siblings pretty ticked off. It starts off with a simple, yet condescending nonetheless, request: “JST, do you have to wear that Patriots jersey? Can’t you put on something nice?” Then its: “SJT, sit up straight.” Followed by “Harrison, would you just make a normal face?” and then, “JST, will you smile please? I paid 5,000 for those teeth.” This doesn’t only come from the parents, but the whole peanut gallery, including JST’s repeated requests for HJT to make him laugh, because if he’s not laughing he feels stupid smiling, and BMT constantly shooing the dog away, because it would be unfair to have the dog in the Christmas picture and not the cat, and all of us telling Dad to just hurry up and take the picture already. Sometimes one of the brothers is in a silly mood and won’t stop making farting noises or hitting the other until it gets so annoying that he is yelled at, after which the offending brother sulks for the remainder of the photo shoot. And always, without fail, there is the quintessential statement from mom: “look happy, dammit! It’s Christmastime!” When picture-taking is all over and we’re all sufficiently at each other’s throats, then comes the critiquing period, in which we all gather around the computer to choose which picture will be sent to 150 of my parents’ closest friends and relatives. Each picture is met with a chorus of “HJT is making a stupid face,” “I look fat,” “My eyes are closed,” “JST isn’t smiling,” and the like. Mom usually responds with, “Oh, I like that one!” while Dad silently clicks through the pictures wondering, no doubt, why he subjects himself to this each year.

In the end, however shameless and perhaps even pointless Christmas pictures might be, they’re still a tradition that my family seems unwilling to break. A year without a Christmas card complete with a picture is like a year without Santa Claus, we don’t know why we keep spinning the fable, but we do. Fat, happy Santa coming down the chimney; smiling, effervescent kids not pinching each other behind their backs; it’s all part of the façade. Next year my parents will vow to take the picture earlier, in the summertime, on the beach, or something. Secretly, I’ll want to send a picture of the four kids around a keg. Merry Christmas, love us.