First posted in 2008.

I was a Toddler Delinquent

My younger sister was born when I was two. She had a heart condition requiring frequent at home doctor visits and her care became paramount to my mother. We lived in Batesville, Arkansas where my father was the assistant prosecuting attorney. His office was downtown perhaps three blocks from our house.

When feeling ignored by my mother I would set off to find entertainment. Sometimes I ended up at the grocery store or bank. Downtown took up maybe two blocks and we lived on Bates Street. The grocer or banker knowing my sister’s condition would entertain me until my father could pick me up. Sometimes that took awhile if it was a court day.

I was jealous of my sister and when my mother wasn’t watching I would take her out in the yard and leave her there. When my panicked parents discovered her missing they would ask, “Where is your sister?” and I would answer, “She’s gone. She doesn’t live here now.”

My father spent one entire weekend building a fence around the backyard to contain me and to ensure that if I took my sister outside for abandonment she would not be abandoned far. There was no gate – the fence’s purpose was definitely imprisonment.

Then as now I don’t talk a lot in person until I know someone. Then I talk all the time and ask a lot of questions. I knew my dad. Over the years daddy invented many ways to get me to stop talking, as in, “Don’t talk when fishing because the fish will hear you and swim away” which I believed to be true until a few years ago because daddy said it. At baseball games I could not talk until the beginning of the seventh inning when I could tell him what I wanted to eat (popcorn, hot dog). Then he would give me money for it.

Anyway, he had been working on the fence for a long time, I had been following him around talking most of the time, and he had tuned my talking out hours before. He installed the last section of fence. I was still talking and he stopped ignoring me – because he realized I had climbed over the fence and was talking to him from the other side.

(My dad is exactly like the lawyer character on Matlock down to wearing the seersucker suit in the summer time. There still are a few of those guys around.)

Despite My Best Efforts My Little Sister Did Not Die

My sister  lived and I continue to torment her. When I was eight and she was six she still believed wholeheartedly in Santa Claus. This was in the olden days of 1970.

Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care. . . I saw that when my mother was  worried she would go to the index in the back of the book, go to a page, read for awhile, and then do or say something around us – sometimes quite odd and decidedly not like her.

I believed somewhat in Santa Claus and had made the mistake of admitting this in Ms. Daisy Wheeler’s third grade classroom. My classmates were derisive and chanted, “You are such a baby.”

So I went home and asked mom, “Is there a Santa Claus?” She looked nervous and went to find the book. She came back and said, “Well honey if you believe in Santa Claus then he is real.” That made no sense. My believing in stuff did not make it real. Who was she kidding? I still believe in a lot of things -- and frequently find out later that I should not.

I found her book, looked in the index for the page number, found the Santa Claus section, and took it into the kitchen to read that paragraph with the phrase, “Well if you believe in Santa Claus then he is real” to my mom. She was appropriately horrified and told me to read the book myself from then on when I had any questions.

When my older daughter  was around six she asked if Santa Claus was real. I used Spock’s advice with a twist knowing my oldest daughter can be mercenary -- she left a reply note to the tooth fairy one time when said fairy only left her one dollar indicating he/she was cheap and owed her nine more dollars. So my reply was “the longer you believe in Santa Claus the more presents you get.” She is determined to believe in Santa Claus her entire life.