Most of the time, the middle child and I got along famously well. But occasionally, she’d bug me unrelentingly when I just wanted to be left alone. Usually, catastrophe ensued.
One time, we were about 10 and 11, give or take a year. We were still in our pajamas. I was reading in our house, probably in the living room, and she was harassing me somehow, teasing and/or poking. After ignoring her several times, and giving my Marlene Dietrich plea, I finally gave chase.
At some point, I stepped onto the back of her bathrobe, and she fell straight down. I don’t recall that she hurt her arms or legs, but she chipped one of her front teeth.
She went to the dentist, and she had some sort of cap on the tooth that was quite noticeable because it was silver in color. And she had it for a couple of years, if I recall correctly.
Some of her classmates teased her mercilessly. “Hi-yo, Silver,” a few of the kids would say, which is what the Lone Ranger said to his horse when we watched it on TV. She got very good at keeping her mouth closed around these miscreants.
Eventually, the situation was remedied, and her tooth was back to its normal shade.
As I recall, I never got into trouble for this. I got spanked for stuff I ought not to have, as a child. But her well-known harassment of me, and my slowness to anger served me well in this situation.
What she did not recall, until I mentioned it only within the past two years, was that I was responsible for her chipped tooth. She had misremembered the incident and had attributed it to our baby sister, who was not involved.
My wife has admitted that she too harassed her late brother John when they were kids, and like me, he was not allowed to “hit a girl.”
Happy birthday to the middle child. No more Hi-yo, Silver! I shall NOT conclude this post with the last section of the William Tell Overture by Rossini.
