Four-Four

Happy Birthday to Jennilyn!



On this day, thirty-seven years ago, my sister, Jennilyn was born.



Since I was still a wee thing--just twenty-one months old at the time--I don't remember much.




I remember (or remember being told) that my dad was out of town, at some training for the Air Force. We lived on Williams Air Force Base, outside Chandler, Arizona, at the time. My Grandmama came to help my mom. This was back in the olden days (almost back as far as when the pioneers lived) when fathers weren't allowed in the delivery room. So neither were Grandmamas. My Grandmama stayed with me while my mom was in the hospital. We played a very fun game called Find The Asparagus. I'm not sure why we did this, all I know is that my Grandmama "hid" an imaginary asparagus, and I looked all over the house, looking for it. I found it--behind the kitchen door. I'm sure I was pretty pleased with myself!




I don't have many other memories of this time, but here are a few childhood memories of Jennilyn:

We almost always dressed alike. People were always mistaking us for twins. We didn't really look that much alike, but I remember people always asked if we were twins.



Jennilyn was the only one in the family that ever got a two-piece bathing suit. She was two--oops! my mom says she was one. And sexy! I always held that over my mom's head.



When she was 3 and I was 5, she took ballet and I took gymnastics. I remember going to her recital, where all the little girls "danced" as if they were flowers growing. We got black leotards that we wore until we couldn't stretch them over our bodies--I think I was 11 when it wouldn't fit any more.



We played together ALL. THE. TIME. We played house, school, barbies, Primary (we even got in trouble for taking the sacrament once), Charlie's Angels (on our roller skates).



We made delicious treats. Grape jam between saltines. Strawberry jam "poi." "Zoom" tacos.





The summer she was 6 and I was 8, we had been watching Card Sharks. We liked to pretend we were on game shows, so we were playing Card Sharks one day. Jennilyn was the host and I was the contestant. She asked lots of questions, to which I had to guess the percentage of "respondents" who would would answer in the positive. Jennilyn asked, "We asked 100 married men: How many of you were bachelors before being married?" I answered: 100! Jennilyn told me I was wrong and told me it was a very low number. To which I told her, "No. All married men were bachelors before being married." Jennilyn replied that I was mistaken. I then told her that not only were all married men bachelors prior to marriage, but even our dad had been a bachelor. She told me I was very wrong and ran into the other room to tell on me. I don't know what she thought a bachelor was, but it couldn't have been good.



When we would clean our room, we were very slow. But we had a song we would hum, if we needed to speed up. We would hum loudly, and run around the room, flinging toys and clothes into their respective receptacles. I'm sure we did a horrible job, but we thought we were geniuses. I have no idea how we came up with the song we did, but here it is: The theme song from S.W.A.T.!



Happy Birthday Jennilyn! Hope this year is great!