The Snow Shovel

"If one of you kids leaves the snow shovel outside again, you're going to sleep with it! That's a promise."

So spoke my dad. He meant it. I was the idiot who left the shovel outside the next time. It wasn't soon, but it wasn't long enough for him to have forgotten the threat, either. Unfortunately, I shared a double bed with my sister Ellen. She was seventeen months older than me, and had no tolerance for the little sister who could pull dumb stunts at home and straight A's at school.

We learned that night that snow shovels take up more room than little kids, and they never warm up. I'm thinking that Ellen either forgot about the shovel incident, since we're friends now, or she eventually forgave me. She probably forgot about it, which means that writing about this in a blog is not really bright on my part. On the other hand, seeing the new slide shows of my granddaughters playing in the snow and curled together in the little one's crib as Ashley wakes Kate up in the morning made me think back, and "full disclosure" has been one of the trademarks of this space for me.

Ellen was fairly good at getting her revenge when necessary, but I don't think she ever did anything that made me as uncomfortable as that snow shovel made her. In case I never said it at the time, "I'm so very sorry, Ellen. I was careless. I'll never do it again."