Channeling Marsha

I swore I would never do it. I was going to break the chains, stop the madness.

But I'm a desperate woman. None of the usual consequences were working. So I did it.

I made Michael write sentences today. Ten sentences (each had to exceed 6 words) that described what he likes about his brother. Punishment, discipline, correction - whatever you want to call it for being mean.

It is important to note, that I am not the author of this creative little exercise. All the credit is due Marsha. She's inventive, cunning, and was always one step ahead of us kids. My brother, sister and I, all took our turns experiencing the consequences of our bad choices. Like the time I flipped off my brother. I had to stand in front of a mirror for one hour flipping myself off. My mom said that since I liked to use obscene gestures, I had better practice and get it right. Slamming a door bought you the opportunity to open and shut it 500 times counting out loud. If you didn't have a pleasant tone as you counted, you were required to start over. My brother spit at me once and had to spit into a cup till he filled it half way.

We thought we were so smart one night when all the vegetables we didn't want to eat got passed under the table to my brother. He later went to the backyard and hucked it all over the fence. This system of disposing unwanted and stolen food worked fantastically for several months until the neighbor came over one day with a bag of soda cans, rotten carrot and celery sticks, pork chops and broccoli. That bought us an entire day weeding his yard.

I mentioned stolen food. We were not allowed to just go into the pantry and eat whatever, whenever. I understand today that my mom was just trying to protect her inventory from the locusts. My brother ate an illegal banana and had to eat 10 more in one sitting. I don't know if he likes bananas anymore.

Her stuff worked, I thought twice before I called my brother an idiot - I didn't want to be made to list 100 things I liked about him.

I'm passing it on.