Butts and Ashes: Middle Children are Special

I always believed I was adopted. No, really, I actually believed that for years as a kid. I was nothing like my sisters. They were all fancy and I was all not. They liked doing girlie things and I liked climbing the rubber tree at the back of our garage so I could get onto the roof and pretend I was on some weird spy mission. My sisters loved doing their hair and wearing makeup. I liked playing war with the other kids in the neighborhood. Also, my sisters were a bit more on the normal side whereas I liked to entertain the crowds that showed up at our house. I was constantly coming up with routines to perform which often included playing the piano, (I knew one song), singing, (I can't), telling jokes, (I did fairly well), and impersonating family members, (I was a smash hit!)

Then there were our pool parties. My sisters liked to have their friends come over to sunbathe. You know what that was back in the day, right? No? Oh, please let me explain then. It's where you get the cutest little bikini to wear and you slather the uncovered parts of yourself with baby oil or butter. Yeah, butter. I know, girls are stupid. Then you lay out by the pool listening to the transistor radio while you literally steam yourself like a human tamale. I, on the other hand, was climbing up to the top of the concrete block fence, then walking along it to the cabana where I hoisted the lawn chair I was schlepping up onto the roof followed by giving myself a heave ho up. Once I had myself positioned just so, near the edge of the cabana roof closest to the pool, I would sit in the lawn chair and yell to get the girlie girls attention. As soon as they'd see me, it was a perfectly executed cannonball into the pool, still seated in the lawn chair, of course. In all fairness, I was only able to pull this magnificent feat off once because my sister Kelly was a massive tattletale. As usual, I had to hear, "What is wrong with you?" from my parents. Looking back, my sisters might have been right about the attention whore thing.

Anyway, I have been going through thousands of photographs from my dead parents, my dead sister, my dead aunts and uncles, and dead people I'm not even sure I ever knew. I am the keeper of all things once belonging to dead people. It's a lot of work and mental baggage but somebody's gotta do it. You're welcome. Tonight, as I was going through hundreds more photos, sorting and such, I found evidence that I was, more than likely, genetically related to Chuck and Bernie.