Cinderelly Ramblings

In my family there are five of us chick-a-dees. Let me introduce you: I have referred to her as S in the past, but I find that solitary letters as names are hard to read and so I dub thee Bear. Bear is the oldest of the crew and can be described as boisterous and clumsy. Ironically those adjectives describe her precisely. She will tell you exactly what she’s thinking without a second thought and then she will fall down the stairs. Not joking.

Since I’m going in age order here the next sibling in line would be me. I won’t delve into a personal biography here seeing as you should already know about my neurosis from blogs past.

Next in line is the baby girl of the bunch. You may know her as A but I think that she too deserves a blog name: Smash. Most would say that Smash is the blond, Barbie-like version of me. She has the same fiery attitude and the same ability to cry at the drop of a pretty pink Treesje handbag.

Number four brings us to the first of the testosterone ridden members of this faction. His blog name is quite easy for me to come up with as no one ever calls him by his real name. You may know him as B, but from now on he shall be referred to as Bud. He’s the Einstein of the family. When he was in the 3rd grade he could recite every American president and vice president – in chronological order.

I know there are a lot of us but this I the last one, I promise.

He has been known as Z in previous posts but shall be now known as Maestro. This name is one that I gave him a long, long time ago. It is one that he has hated but that I have refused to let go of. Maestro it is. From the day he was born you could tell that he was going to be one mischievous little punk and that proved to be more than true. He has actually knocked his teeth back up into his gums, gotten his finger stuck in some type of metal device and had to have it sawed off (the device, not the finger), and has had a plethora of injuries from severe road rash to being knocked unconscious.

What’s the point to all of this? Well, not only is it to introduce you all to my crazy, wonderful siblings but also to bring you to my point; one of my favorite and least favorite childhood pastimes.

It was no secret in my family; we kids were of little use when it came to cleaning or picking up after ourselves. It was so well known that my grandma sent me a Valentine’s Day card and wrote on the inside: Happy Valentine’s Day Xteener. Do help your mama like you helped me when you were here. Then you might get off restriction. Wouldn’t that be nice? I don't even have to tell you how pathetic this is, but don't judge me people, I've since grown up.

There was no way my mom was going to let us off without chores of any kind. She would type up a monthly schedule of what chores were to be done each day and by whom. (Wash the dishes Cinderelly, clean the toilette Cinderelly.) And each Saturday was dubbed “extra-special-cleaning-day.” This meant that fan blades were dusted, knobs were sanitized, and floors were mopped. We were constantly cleaning. Strangely enough we kids never seemed to grasp the concept of picking up after ourselves, the place was always a mess, and the topic became a constant struggle within our household.

Here’s where all of my rambling comes together – sort of.

My mama was a clever woman. While all five of her messy children are polar opposites, there are two things that tie us together. Song and dance. My mom knew that if she wanted anything to get done she had to make it fun for us. She would put her Dolly Parton CD into the player and crank the volume. Not only was extra-special-cleaning-day productive but it was fun! (OK, I realize I sound like Monica Geller right now. Maybe you had to be there to experience the fun that is musical-cleaning.)

So in summary: chores, not my favorite. I’d rather do long division than fold laundry. Music and dance – I love! Combine the two, a tolerable and effective way to get me to do chore-type things.

I love that my family is so musical. We all inherited the music gene. This doesn’t mean that we all can sing like Pavarotti. Heck no. This just means that we have every lyric to every song ever made memorized and stored away for future use. During a regular-every-day conversation any one of us can pull out something that was said and make it into a song or find a song that has those exact (or similar) lyrics. Let me give you an example.

Bridge Man, I can’t get my car key out of the ignition.

Did you put it in park?

Oh. Ha ha. Makes sense. Thanks. You’re my hero.

And then I break into a rendition of “Wind Beneath My Wings” that rivals the vocal talents of Bette Midler herself. I'm just cool like that. I’m in a family/memories/reminiscing type mood. So what are your favorite and least favorite childhood memories? Does your family have any traits that are uniquely your own?