My Family & Me Sisterly Love Part 3

For those persons who grew up in the same era I did, the 1940s and 1950s, it will come as no surprise that my two best childhood friends were the younger sisters of my older sister Ginny's two best friends. Large families were the norm, and everyone took the arrival of a new baby brother or sister in stride.

Ilene, Deanne and I were beneath the three older girls' notice, and that suited us fine. Let them do their thing, and we would do ours. This changed dramatically when the older three girls became teenagers and entered junior high school.

Overnight, it seemed, they became these fascinating, bewildering creatures, and we spied on them shamelessly. We read any of their notes we could get our hands on, and teased them unmercifully.

'Revenge is never sweet' some oracle once noted. What did that person know? They never had an older sister, obviously.

Shirley's room became their hangout place as she was the only one of the three girls who didn't share a bedroom.

No spy could have been stealthier than we three younger ones were, creeping up the stairs one by one and sneaking into Ilen's room next to Shirley's. Huddling against the wall between the two rooms, our ears stood to attention so as not to miss a word. Trying not to let loose a burst of laughter at their silliness, posed the biggest threat of our being discovered.

Movies, today's favorite song, the most glamorous actress, the leading man with the dreamiest eyes, it continued ad nauseam.

Hairstyles, make-up, clothes. Some classmate's fabulous dimples. Bored, I signaled to the other two. "Do you want to go?"

We hit paydirt! No forty niner in the Gold Rush could have been more excited!

"I'll tell you what boy I like," Donna said, "if you two do the same. "

The silence hummed

with tension. I stopped breathing. In our continuing battle to get one over the other, this would be our best weapon yet!

"I'll go first," Donna said, "since I brought it up."

Malicious grins passed among the three of us listening. Pure gold!

Kathy Young Wonderling is a former Spirit reporter who wrote a weekly column, My Family & Me, starting in the early 2000s. An octogenarian, Kathy is a widow, mother, grandmother, greatgrandmother, sister and aunt. With such a large family, she has too many memories not to share.