A Little History on Curly

Continuing in the vein of dishing dirt, we move on to Curly.

Something triggered my memory the other day…reminded me of something Curly used to do, and then I got on a roll, thinking about a lot of things she used to do…and things I used to do to her.

We went through this phase as a family…the Seasoned Salt had to be on the table along with regular salt and pepper. Regular salt and pepper by itself just wasn’t good enough, I guess. Leave it to my family to have odd quirks like that. Anyway, this phase probably started about the time Curly was 6 or 7…I don’t remember exactly. But what I do remember is that she wouldn’t call the Seasoned Salt by its actual name for some reason. She called it Bosshopper. Where she came up with that, I will never know. But that’s what she called it. And the rest of us had to call it that, of course, or else Curly was very unhappy. Thus, the younger siblings grew up thinking that the actual name of the stuff was Bosshopper, until they learned to read and discovered that’s not what the bottle said. I don’t remember exactly when she finally came out of that phase…at some point she must’ve realized that the civilized world just wouldn’t call Seasoned salt bosshopper.

And that wasn’t the only thing she named. There were all kinds of things that had peculiar names around our house. I won’t even mention the cat that she named – I feel too badly for the cat to even type its name. One other thing she had a name of her own for was deodorant. She called it oohoo, you know, like “Yoohoo” without the “Y.” I guess the imagination can figure out why she called deodorant oohoo, but it’s still weird.

She also used to talk in her sleep. Not just talk in her sleep – she carried on full conversations in her sleep. If you caught her at just the right time, you could get her talking about anything. It was pretty funny, and useful for reconnaissance missions, too. I guess Deputy Guy is the only one who can tell us if she still carries on conversations while snoozing.

As for stuff I did to her…where to begin? She’s five years younger than I am, and we fought like cats and dogs. There was always something. She was looking at me, or touching me, or touching my stuff, or thinking about touching my stuff. I just couldn’t take it sometimes. At the time I didn’t think much about it, but now I wonder…we lived in a huge farmhouse when we were little, yet most of the time, Curly and I still shared a bedroom and sometimes even a bed. The whole thing baffles me as to why, with all of that space, we didn’t get to have our “own” anything. Because I don’t think we ever really, actually, liked each other until I moved out and moved away.

One thing I did to her all the time was just hilarious to me (remember, I was eleven). I still can’t believe she fell for it as many times as she did. We had this great “climbing” tree in the backyard…it was perfect. Perfect size limbs, perfect spacing – you know, the perfect tree. Except that the first branch was too tall for Curly and Trump to reach (which made it even more perfect for me). Dad, in his MacGyver-style genius, fixed a locking pulley system with a 5-gallon bucket so that Curly, Trump, et al. could get up into the tree. It was fashioned so that you couldn’t pull yourself up – you had to get into the bucket and someone from the ground had to pull the rope and lock it into place. There were many ways I used this new tool to torture Curly and Trump, but my favorite method was to pull Curly about halfway up, lock the rope, then leave. (My second-favorite was to try to dump her out of the bucket in mid-air – mean, I know.) I can’t tell you how many times I did that to her. Sometimes that was the only way I could get away from her for a few minutes. It was a joy, believe me.

I think one of the most horrible things I ever did to her was when we were about 10 and 5; I taped her mouth shut. With duct tape. You see, Curly had this ability to talk incessantly about everything and nothing, driving you absolutely out of your mind. One day, I just snapped. I’d had enough…I couldn’t take it anymore…and I was 10. I warned her that I would tape her mouth shut, and obviously, she didn’t listen. So, I followed through on the threat and put a nice shiny gray piece of duct tape right across her mouth. It shut her up, alright. Until she started screaming at me with her mouth closed, cried, and ruined the whole thing. So of course, I had to peel it off. And if you’ve ever tried to take duct tape off, you know it doesn’t come off anything very easily, much less a squirmy, annoying little five year old. We finally got it off, but I think she had some tape residue on her cheeks for a couple of days. Yes, I got in trouble for that one, but I don’t think it garnered a spanking, which was rare for something of that magnitude of evil. I know it’s awful, but I still have a sense of satisfaction when I think back on that. At least I got her to shut up for a little bit, which is more than I can say for anyone else.

Curly’s all grown up now…married to Deputy Guy and thoroughly enjoying herself. We do sisterly things every now and then – for short periods of time so we don’t get on each other’s nerves. All in all, she’s a pretty good sister.