The "Crazy Years"

When my sister Susanne was a teenager, she went through a time that we call the "crazy years." I was only a little kid, about five. I now know some of the things that were going on, but I don't know all of it. However, I'm going to write about what I remember as a little kid. (My brother would have a rather different recollection of the goings-on of this time period.)

I have one memory that would have occurred early on in the crazy years or maybe even before them. We had some other kids over, the Downings, and I saw a ripe tomato in our backyard garden. I thought it was really cool--even though I didn't like tomatoes--so I picked it and carried it around with me that day. That night I slept in my sister's bed; I liked to do that. (I don't remember where she slept--maybe on the other mattress, since it was a trundle bed.) I even took the tomato to bed with me. I woke up in the morning--but the tomato didn't. I smashed it in the middle of the night. It stained the sheet, and for a long time after that I would ask to see the stained sheet.

I would have been in preschool, although I actually don't remember my preschool life overlapping with my crazy-year life. I think my preschool was only a few days a week.

I would spend the days at home with Susanne. She would faint often. I would hear her sigh and she would fall to the floor. Sometimes I would like to go over and open her eyes. I remember her using vinegar to clean the carpet after she would pee on it. Eventually she got a monitor to carry around, and I was supposed to press a little button whenever she fainted. Sometimes I would do it; however, it made an eerie beeping noise, so I was often too creeped out to press it. Once my mom and sister asked me why I didn't press it, and I told them it was scary.

Although her fainting was a regular occurrence, one day I decided to call 911 when she fainted. I remember the dispatcher asking me where she fainted. I told her, "In the living room," because that's where it happened--although I don't think that's what the dispatcher wanted to know. The police showed up and I let them in. One officer asked what her name was. When I told him, he kept saying "Susanne" to try to revive her. (Apparently some news channel called us later and talked to my dad, asking if they could do a story about me. He said, "I'll have to talk to my wife about it"--thus blowing my chance at fame. Rats!)

Susanne and my mom also had to go to counseling appointments. Sometimes I would go with. I remember one visit when the counselor told Susanne to make sure she ate veggies--I had never heard "vegetables" abbreviated that way before. There was another visit shortly after Christmas, when my mom bought me a Christmas stamp kit (probably on clearance). I think she got it to go with the turtle stamp I got at Sea World. I can remember sitting outside the office, stamping away on a piece of paper. I can't remember whether the stamp had music notes on it, or if only the ink pad was decorated with music notes. I remember getting home and stamping with my turtle stamp as well.

Susanne didn't go to school and was tutored by "Wangs," the women's coach at South Davis Junior High (I didn't know that was her name until I went to SDJH). I remember one wintery day when my mom was playing outside in the snow with me while Wangs was inside tutoring. We threw a snowball at the window. Then when we went back inside, I told them that we threw a snowball at the window, and Wangs said, "I said, 'Who threw that snowball?'" We had a wooden puzzle-piece reindeer, and Wangs asked me what its name was. I told her Rudolph, and she said it couldn't be Rudolph because its nose wasn't red.

During the day I would watch TV with Susanne. She liked watching the Vicki talk show. She used to watch reruns of I Love Lucy and Bewitched and occasionally The Andy Griffith Show. I remember watching the Bewitched episode in which Tabitha goes into the story of Hansel and Gretel. I remember the Lucy episode when they were in Europe and had to have multiple language interpreters. This was the first seed in my interest in old TV shows.

My dad had a rowing machine that had a large black rectangle with little white specks on it. I decided that it looked like a TV with a starry sky on it, so I would pretend it was showing The Jetsons. Later I decided that if it was showing The Jetsons, it could show other shows as well, so I remember one day pretending that I had a whole collection of shows to watch on this imaginary TV. I told Susanne that I even had Vicki.

We also used to watch The Sound of Music almost every day.

I remember one day there was a cat stuck in our window well. Susanne and I went out with my little blue blanket and put it down the window well so that the cat could climb out.

I'm sure I will remember more after I post this--but that's all for now!