Growing Up With Gretchen

            by Lizzy Arnason

 

            Most people, generally speaking, think that new born babies, aside from their wrinkled alien like appearance, are cute. People enjoy staring down at these miniature human beings which resemble small creatures from the planet Neptune, often with misshapen heads, patchy hair, and a knack for pulling out your hair with their pudgy little hands. But adults, in their infinite wisdom know that these strange little things, although ugly at first will soon blossom into the adorable and cuddly babies who can be photographed sticking their happy little faces out from flower pots. So the adults coo over the crib at the little baby inside it, telling the mother how beautiful it is while deep in their hearts they’re really saying to the mother “Don’t worry, they all look like this at first”.

             My darling older sister, a whopping three years old at my birth, had only limited contact with the new born baby form, in fact she had never seen one besides herself, in a mirror, when she too was that age. She liked the baby dolls, you know the cute little ones that cry when you press a button and make fake pee, the  Betsey Wetsey doll. Well, I having just come from the hospital, a brand spanking new born baby, a crying and squirming, lacked the uniformity and all around cuteness of the dolls my sister, Gretchen, knew and loved. So my sister carefully deliberated about exactly how to turn off the new doll her mom had brought home. Sitting on the couch and staring at the crib the idea dawned on her. She got up and peered into my crib, I looked up at her and she slapped me.

            That was how I first met my older sister Gretchen. Of course I don’t remember this story but my mother has told it quite a few times to her chuckling group of mommy friends. Although this may seem like a funny family anecdote if you look closer it is clear and irrefutable proof to one of the biggest arguments between siblings. Who started it? Clearly it was my sister. After our bumpy first meeting things just didn’t seem to go smoothly for my sister and I.

            For my fifth birthday I received my very first pair of roller blades. Presumably during my big birthday bash Gretchen hatched her evil plan to ruin it all. Possibly she was plotting because her eight year old temper couldn’t handle some misdoing that hod been done to her by me in the last week. Her small temper was set off and revenge was her goal, nothing could stop her. After I thoroughly exhausted the joys of a bounce house and a giant tub of spaghetti to roll around in, I headed to the side walk with my entourage in tow to test out my new wheels. My sister followed maliciously lurking behind my dad, the camera man. Gliding up and down the narrow strip of sidewalk in front to of my house I was too consumed by the gentle lull of the wheels on pavement to notice Gretchen. My sister was deviously inching a large branch into my path on the sidewalk and then BAM! I was on the ground face first, no time to block my fall with my hands, a skill that even today I have trouble exhibiting. I had to wear a Band Aide on my face for a month! On top of missing a front tooth, being freakishly tall and having elbows so pointy that they could take out a sumo wrestler. Although there was never significant evidence to prove my sisters guilt there’s no way a branch could have just appeared out of thin air. Unfortunately the camera man was not around to capture my downfall because he was off gorging on the cake. It was a three layer chocolate vanilla masterpiece, you can’t really blame him, but I do blame my sister.

            It took me eight years to build up my bone mass enough to be as big as my sister. She unfortunately did not get the giant genes I seemed to inherit. I used to think that girls were just supposed to be taller than guys, I found out in middle school that guys just take a little longer. Well when I finally was as big as my sister I was also a walking, talking, human shaped giraffe, ganglier than the hot new anorexic super model imported from Kurkawawastan. When my sister and I started sizing each other up for the impending battle, the small squirmishes began. Sometimes she would win, sometimes and with increasing frequency I could pin her down. Most of our fights were mini Jackie Chan battles over the T.V remote when our parents weren’t around. She would want Full House and I would want Boy Meets World. It never really mattered if there was actually something we both wanted to watch, it was all about holding that oh so powerful trophie, the remote. Once you had it though, you had to be extremely wary. At any time you could be ambushed and lose your power. I would watch the same episode of a TV show that I’d already seen three times before giving up the remote. Eventually our parents would hear the precious electronic clatter to the floor and they would end the fight for the night by switching to CNN.

            One time our family took one long and disastrous trip to Tahoe. That morning we all had to wake up at four in the morning and my sister and I both wanted to sleep in the car, but she refused to share the arm rest. So I pulled the classic hitting my sister in the back seat of the car while screaming, “Ow! GRETCHEN!”

            “Gretchen stop bothering your sister,” my mother would say (it didn’t take long for the ‘rents to figure that little prank out)

            When I was eight I joined the same swim team that my sister was on. Considering the blood curdling fights and bruise winning competitions that we put ourselves through, it only seemed natural for our parents to have us do the exact same sport. A sport, that for the large part doesn’t take age into account for competition so a twelve year old can race against a fifteen year old as long as their times are close.

            Swimming is really and amazing sport. There are four, that’s right, a whopping four different ways you can move yourself from one end of a large, twenty five yard, bath tub like hole in the ground, to the other side. And, get this, because it’s the best part, when you finally get there you turn around and go back, and once you get back you turn around again and go back, then go back, then go back again, and again, and again, and again and again.

            Wow, what a sport! So now, instead of pulling each others hair out over the television remote, Gretchen and I could see who could go back and forth and back and forth and back and forth, again and again, and again the fastest. Over the years, the amount of time we spent training increased, and eventually, we were in the same level of training. As things played out I could go back and forth just as fast and in a few events faster than my sister. So not only were we competing in races but at practice we often ended up in the same lane. This did not create a strong sisterly bond, more like a strong sisterly annoyance. Three to five hours a day, six days a week I spent within twenty five yards of my darling sibling.

            There was one particular way of swimming that I could truly and completely beat my sister in. Butterfly. The name evokes images of a nice, pretty creature, fluttering gently in the breeze. The stoke butterfly could be called similar to its namesake if you’re one of those people with a butterfly phobia and dream about how its an evil flesh eating beast from hell, and if that’s what you think about butterflies then you have a pretty good idea of what the stroke is like. My sister never took it well that I could beat her in this particular discipline of swimming but, as she is quick to point out, she could beat me in the 50 freestyle. The most popular event in swimming for its shortness and general easiness in my opinion. But I suppose that’s just another place where my sister and I differed in our views.    After awhile I decided that going back and forth just wasn’t my thing, so I quit to pursue other endeavors, leaving that realm of competition for my sister, surprisingly she lost her interest in the sport quickly after I left.

            There’s a park at my old middle school, near my house that used to have this super cool play structure made out of wood. Some fatty kid broke it awhile ago (they say it was dry rot, but c’mon we all know it wasn’t the scrawny little shrimp who was on it when it broke.) At the very tippy top of the structure is a platform to board the two story fire house style pole leading to the deathly splinterful ground below. Gretchen somehow got me to go up with her and on the way up we got into a fight over whose turn it was to do the dishes. I had done them the night before, this was common knowledge, ask my mother, but still somehow, there was some miracle and my turn had risen again. Finally we reached the summit of this wood structure and at this precarious height and position we started to push each other. Push, shove, duck, and I was off the platform headed, luckily feet first, towards the ground below, right next to em was the fireman pole, but seriously do you really think I’m coordinated enough to grab that before hitting the ground and spraining my ankle. Because the fight was my fault, because I was “really supposed to do the dishes” my sister never really helped out when I couldn’t walk because it was all my fault and I started. I just laughed at this because we all know who really started it.