When I was 10 my family started meeting for a house church with several other families. One of those families had 6 boys. That may sound like chaos and sometimes it was, but through all the craziness of that many boys, one thing was drilled into them: to respect girls. I vividly remember that their family had a pond with a zipline over it. We used to zipline out over the middle of the pond, and then let go and swim back to the dock to do it again. Usually the momentum gave out and the zipline stopped dead in the middle of the pond. It became a challenge to try and see how long we could hold on before slipping with a splash into the water. It was even more challenging to hang on when all of the boys began shaking the zipline to try and make the person hanging on fall off. That game was a lot of fun and I began playing it too. After a couple times, the boys’ dad noticed that his sons were trying to shake a little girl off of the zipline. He told them to stop and they did. At the time, I was enjoying the game and was a little annoyed that they weren’t allowed to play rough with me. Though they were never allowed to treat me roughly they let me take part in everything that they did. Now I a grateful for the respect that they were required to show me. Those boys taught me what sort of respect I should expect from men and boys. Nowadays women are taught that it is weak not to be able to be treated as men, and female dignity is being done away with. Men are not learning to respect women. The facts are that women are different then men, but that doesn’t mean that us women have to sit around and knit, or drink tea (though I do like tea) and wear fancy clothes all the time. Also a well mannered man will not leave a woman out, he will treat her as an equal if not better. Men should open doors for women and be respectful. I am so grateful that I got to experience respectful boys that treated me as an equal, and enjoyed hanging out with me.
Family Singing (story #7)
My dad always sings a song based on whatever we are doing in the moment. For example, if my mom mentions that on of my sisters is demonstrating leaderships skills, my dad sings in a high-pitched voice “the leader of the pack“. Maybe someone mentions sharks and my dad belts out “baby shark doo doo doo doo“, or my brother says “That movie was so cringe. The couple held hands the whole time.” and my dad sings, “I wanna hold your hand!” Other times he just sings any song that happens to be stuck in his head. My dad has done this my whole life, and because of it, all of my 5 siblings and I do too. If someone is feeling sad we will sing a song to make them feel better. I pause here to mention that as I write this, my dad is playing a song on his iPad, and singing in the background.
Today my mom was busy, so I put my two year-old sister down for a nap. I put her down, and then pretended to be sleeping, and snored a little bit. She instantly did what she has witnessed he whole life, singing based on the occasion. She asked in a melodious singing voice, “Are you sleeping? Are you sleeping?” That made my day. Singing brings joy. My siblings and I will carry this trait from my dad with us our whole lives, even if it makes us “strange.” What is amazing, is that my grandpa Wilson (on my dad’s side) sings all the time too. It must run in our family, even if we can’t carry a tune.
Singing Time, by Rose Fyleman
I wake in the morning early
And always, the very first thing,
I poke out my head and I sit up in bed
And I sing and I sing and I sing.
Life on the Edge (story #6)
When my grandpa Wilson (on my dad’s side) was a kid, he used to do dangerous things. He didn’t tell his mom about a lot of it. One of these activities required holding onto a railroad bridge, and dangling precariously over a miniscule stream from a height of 30 feet as the train chugged over the bridge. Grandpa says they did this because it was fun to be shaken by the rattling train. Neither grandpa nor his friends ever fell, but if they had…
P. Terry’s (story #5)
I have fond memories of eating at P. Terry’s burger stand, in Austin TX with my grandparents (on my mom’s side). We often get hamburgers, and lots of crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside, and perfect fries. The restaurant has several locations some outside of Austin and I think the first one originally opened in the 50’s or 60’s. My grandpa Wheeliss has his own story though about how P. Terry’s got it’s start. He tells it with a grin, holding his E-cig in one hand and with an southern accent mixed with something that I can’t describe. He tells it something like this “So there was this guy, and his name was Terry. He used to cook hamburgers in his back yard for his friends, and one day he was cookin, but he had to go peee.” here he would pause to chuckle, then continue, ” All Terry’s friends started chanting ‘Pee Terry Pee.’ Terry ran around and peed, and that is how P. Terry’s got it’s name.” Even though the story is kind of gross, I still laugh because it brings back memories of P. Terry’s.
Brainchild Galore 