Seven is a Lucky Number

11 years, eight months and 16 days ago the youngest of my family was born.

(don’t do the math it wont add up)

Back then I was in Jr. High, and living my awkwardly-normal preteen little life. I was getting good grades, experimenting with make-up (a misunderstanding with blue eyeliner = blackmail photos for eternity), making some of the best friends I’ve ever had, joining track (another misunderstanding) and holding down a steady boyfriend. (as steady as a 13 year old can be.. seriously kids, don’t date in Jr. High. It only makes for body-shiver inducing memories.)

I was living something close to being the teenage dream, or I was until my life as I knew it was sent spinning into orbit, never to return.

Mothers day is pretty a big deal, as is Fathers day; but it was the later event my parents chose as the right moment in time to inform us (me and my sibs) of our growing family… via a scavenger hunt.

It was the scavenger hunt to end all scavenger hunts. And I really do mean “end”, I haven’t trusted one since. I mean the word ‘hunt’ does nothing except excite a young brain, right? Right! So, I was excited, I thought I was going to get a freaking pony! But all I got was a big slap to the ‘emergency stop only’ button and told I was going to have a baby sibling soon.

I guess running off to the nearest dark corner to grow mushrooms and endless amounts of self-pity, isn’t the reaction my parents expected from their first born. But, it was what they got. As all good parents do, faced with abnormal tween behavior, they ran for their lives.

No I’m just kidding, though the thought probably made a rather impressive bid for attention while they tried to console their upset, heartbroken and screaming for no apparent reason oldest daughter who was almost old enough to drive, and are now thinking that one bout of road rage will send her over a cliff. Ya, tell me moms and dads, how do you not lock your children up?

Anyway, I’m not going to lie, this may or may not have happened, but knowing my younger, slightly (read: moderately) aggressive self, I can’t imagine a whole a lot of consoling happened. For one thing, if it had, I wouldn’t have been back in my sulking, self-pity and mushroom cave at my grandmothers later that evening when my mother’s side was informed of our imminent family explosion.

If I remember right, I think everyone in a ten foot radius vowed to never say congratulations to me ever again.

And you all probably thought I was a cheerful, Saint like child huh? Fooled you.

Moving on, I shall further prove how Saint like mini-me could be. Teenagers usually are a little detached from family matters, but I mean who can blame them? Have parents never heard of “friends”? This being said, I wasn’t just detached I was actively kicking away from the family surface as fast as I could to get to the darker deeper water so that I could pretend I was a mermaid and live under the sea and make fishy friends! (why I thought being a mermaid would solve all my problems, I’ll never know. Maybe I didn’t quite understand the whole “fish –phobia of death” thing that I have..)

Ya, I didn’t look, touch or talk to my mother without some sort of emotional break down or body magnet, for weeks at a time. The day she went to the hospital, ya I was playing Mario on the Nintendo 64. I remember the day as if it were yesterday.

None of my siblings were home, or at least I assume they weren’t, because I was the one my parents told what was going on. Me, the girl who was not only the most unsupportive of this whole deal, but also the one being temporarily brainwashed by Nintendo and doing her best to keep Mario outta the freaking Lava so he could collect all those neat little blue coins in under a minute, so she could get a star that is absolutely worhtless.

They told me anyway, so that at nine pm later that evening I could tell my siblings why they weren’t home and why our uncle had just pulled up in the drive way to take us away:

“Seriously I have no idea! But I got that Lava Star! It only took me five tries, beat ya Geg :P”

Again that conversation may or may not have happened, what did happen was a fun sleep over at my grandmothers then a little ride to the hospital to meet the newest alien invader.

Seriously a worse picture could not have been taken.

After the birth of our darling Nicker-nack, I eased up a bit. I mean look at this face:

Who wouldn’t save his saucer-walker incased form from rolling down the stairs? (this happened a number of times, I think he thought with a good foot of hard plastic surrounding him that he was invincible.)

Modeling was his true calling, or at least we thought so. You may call it torture, we called him fabulous.

As he grew up, so did I, to my parents intense relief.

This didn’t stop me from making up names for him though, which I did with great cleverness and creativity. Not all of them were nice, even if they were said in loving tones, and I quickly learned which ones I couldn’t use ie: Mistake. Ya that one got me slapped and grounded. Rightly so.

I’m at the point where I think I need to explain myself. Finally, right?

Let’s see, why would a perfectly normal girl, who has never in her life been an only child suddenly freak out at the thought of a new family member? Was it the change in family status and life style that one gets used to after 10 years? Was it because her parents didn’t tell her until five months in? Was it that her parents didn’t discuss this with anyone but themselves? Was it the journal entry she found her mother writing about a new life she wanted with new children? Was it an unexpected change to her already strange and stressful new life as a teenage girl?

Who knows, but I think it was a little bit of everything.

mushed together with a whole lot of selfishness. I feel really bad about it, but I don’t regret it, it has made the relationship I have with him today.

Which is killer awesome. I love the little squirt more than anything, it is a joy to watch him grow and learn. He’s got one heck of a sense of humor, has more guns and the knowledge to use them than is right for his age, can effectively beat me in Halo, and still lets me cuddle him all I want.

Maybe it’s guilt for treating him so cruelly, but whatever it is, I’m glad of it.