He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother

I remember a brain teaser in grade school where you had to figure out how to get three cannibals and three missionaries across a river in a small boat built for only two passengers.  To prevent a disaster, there can never be more cannibals than missionaries together.

Somehow, I always think of my brothers as the cannibals and me rowing the boat. I never worry about the missionaries-I just have to make sure the cannibals don't try to kill each other.

I am the oldest of five siblings. Until my parents added onto our house, we were wall-to-wall kids with the four oldest sleeping in one bedroom of a two bedroom house.  Maybe that's where the problems started-I slept alone in a cot, my sister had a crib and the boys had to share a bed.  After the house addition and with the arrival of the last baby, the now three boys bunked together in what definitely wasn't the city of brotherly love.  At dinner, we needed rotating seats, because my brothers could never sit next to each other without fighting and they didn't want to sit next to my mother's right hand for fear of being slapped, stabbed with a fork or other DYFUS-reportable offenses.

Luck Be a Lady Tonight

It is true that I have been on a losing streak since last summer.  Casino Craps bosses would take the dice away after the number of snake eyes I can throw in a row and send me packing to their competition. It's bad for business to have a loser on the tables.

So what does a person do who has broken the mirror, while walking under a ladder, with a black cat in in her arms wearing an open umbrella hat?

She buys lottery tickets.

Here She Comes...Miss America

Before last summer, I was someone's Miss America.  Someone chosen as his best of the best.  And, for a brief time, I think I'm safe to say that my sons also thought of me as their Miss America, or at least the best of the peanut-butter-and-jelly-set moms.  Two of them are married now and their wives wear the crown.  My youngest has a girlfriend who is taller, thinner and prettier than I ever was.  Everyone I know is someone's Miss America...but not me anymore.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to go out on a Friday night and headed to a local church carnival.  Walking alone with my snow cone,
I mused about the teenagers mixing and mingling with excited hopes of finding that first love, the young moms and dads taking pictures of their kids on the rides, the senior citizens holding each others arms as they maneuvered over cables and curbs.  It was a raucous smoky crowded night and I was a little depressed being alone.

One Is The Loneliest Number...

Growing up, there were seven people in my family sharing a three bedroom, one bath home.  At college, I lived with three girls in a one-bedroom NYC walk-up.  I shared my first post-college apartment with my best friend, and when she got married, my boyfriend/future husband moved in.  We raised three active sons who for the most part stayed close to the family. As dysfunctional as we all might have been, there was some comfort in having someone around to at least tell you that you were dragging toilet paper on your shoe or had spinach in your teeth.