MY SISTER KARA

I grew up in an interesting household. Anyone who knows me would say that “interesting” probably isn’t quite the right word, but I can’t quite think of the right one! My sister Kara is about three years older than I am, and no one understands how strange our childhood was better than she.


Both of our parents are Ph.D. holders in Psychology. With educated parents, one would expect a certain level of professionalism and organization at home. This was absolutely NOT the case! While most parents would check their small children’s backpacks to see what kind of homework they had to do, we were consistently left to our own devices. It is shocking that we accomplished anything, and didn’t end up in the street on drugs!


For example, in grade 5, I was reading “James and the Giant Peach” and was assigned to make a diorama to present in class. Seeing as our parents were completely disinterested in helping us with our homework, I scoured the house to find items that I could add to my Treetorn shoe box to inspire a scene from the book. I found these things; wood glue, black electrical tape, kite string, orange construction paper, white printer paper, the cuffs from hemmed jeans, red marker, and black ball-point pen. I thank God every day that we had the orange construction paper to make the damn peach, because otherwise I would have used the white paper and colored it red… and hoped no one would notice… So I used the blue jean scraps to make the water, and glued it with wood glue to the inside of the box. There was no white glue in the house, so the wood glue would just have to do. I crumpled up the orange construction paper to make the peach and taped it onto the blue jean water. I drew James, something similar to a stick figure with a happy face) and taped him to the top of the orange paper peach, with the black edges of the electrical tape 100% visible to anyone looking. Then I taped a bunch of white printer paper birds to the top of the box and used kite string and electrical tape to connect James to the birds. I tell you, it wasn’t pretty AT ALL! The thing is that we never had any white glue. Of all the craft materials that I would have given my right foot for was WHITE ELMER’S GLUE. We had wood glue. And I think in my parents junk drawer, this same bottle of wood glue is still there… waiting for me to seek it’s assistance to make another crappy diorama…


So here’s a salute to Kara! Who, despite these similar circumstances, has graduated from College with a B.A. in Child Development, worked on numerous Political campaigns, and is headed off to Graduate School in Boston, MA in a week! I hope she doesn’t have to make any dioramas!