Little Sisters

There have been other times when I wasn’t the one being hurt or getting cut. My little sister has been a pain in my backside since the day she was born. To begin with, I had it made until she came on the scene. I was the baby for almost seven years and I loved it. Now, I wasn’t spoiled but I was usually the center of attention! Then in the summer of 1966, Liz was born and my life took a downward spiral.
Actually it wasn’t all that bad. Liz wanted to follow me everywhere so when she was about five I told her that if she could keep up, she could come along. That girl took to the woods like a duck takes to a June bug! She would follow me and my buddies all over the place. If we tried to lose her, she’d find us. One of my friends said she was half blood hound and the other half seed tick. She’d trail us down and hang on for the ride.
We had built another swing in one of the big oaks along the creek bank that everyone loved. The rope hung just above the edge of the bank and the creek bottom was a good fifteen feet below that. The creek itself was nearly forty feet across here and you could swing almost all the way across. We had tied a loop in the rope and two people could grab on and spin round and round as they made a large circle out over the creek. It was a blast! Being kids, we didn’t think about consequences, we lived for the moment and several of those were spent on this wing.
Being the pest we all thought she was, Liz followed a bunch of us guys to the swing one day. She watched as we took turns swinging with each other out over the creek and kept begging for a turn. We finally relented and since she was my sister it became my duty to swing with her.
At twelve I was a pretty good sized boy and Liz was a gangly six year old kid. Now another thing we didn’t think much about was physics and cause and effect. With her on one side of the loop and me on the other we got a running start and flew out over the creek, spinning as we went. Centrifugal force took over and Liz lost her grip on the swing and was flung across the creek where she hit the bank and rolled down to the bottom. She looked like a rag doll laying there at the bottom of the creek.
After a couple of minutes it was obvious that she was not going to get up. I thought I’d killed her! I scooped her up and ran with her in my arms all the way back to the house. By the time I got there, she had developed two black eyes and was extremely pale. Mom and Dad rushed her to the hospital where the doctor told them that she had a concussion but no broken bones or other internal injuries although I believe it caused long lasting mental problems.