My twin sister and I will be celebrating our 54th birthday this week; or as she likes to say “the silver anniversary of our 29th birthday.” As is often the case, this causes me to look back at both past birthdays as well as childhood memories in general — I think people who have attained a certain number of birthdays probably do the same.

And because we grew up in a time that seemed to be trying to straddle the line between the puritanical fifties and the upheaval of the seventies, it isn’t hard to pinpoint exact moments in time with amazing clarity (given the fact that these days I’m doing good to remember where I put my glasses).

Due to the fact that we were (are?) Baby Boomers, we additionally had the advantage of having a very high number of cohorts to share these experiences with; and growing up in a large metropolitan area like Houston also meant that we had quite a number of available recruits for our neighborhood games — even when the fact that we weren’t allowed off our block was taken into consideration it still meant quite a few kids of various ages available to play with. Or shoot. Or take prisoner.

War Games

One of the amazing aspects of groups of children allowed to play with minimal parental supervision is that the resulting quasi-societies formed are often extremely egalitarian in philosophy. You simply had to bring something to the table in order to be allowed to play with the group. It could be a really cool toy, or expert engineering abilities applicable to building the Christmas tree forts, or sometimes mere physical size and/or strength were enough to gain admittance. I had none of the above.

Our older brother was always involved in some neighborhood military action; he got to shoot the enemy as well as take prisoners of war — sidewinding on his belly in the grass to escape detection and always taking about 20 minutes to die when shot. This is what I wanted to do more than anything.

But I was a girl. And in the 60s, girls didn’t fight in wars. Never, ever, ever.

So my sister and I had to be nurses, tending to the boys (who had cooties, each and every one of them!) with rolls of gauze taken out of medicine cabinets or occasionally getting to amputate limbs; with lots of imaginary blood and not-so-imaginary screaming.

But my heart really wasn’t in it, I wanted to be on the front lines making gunshot holes, not patching them up. I just knew I could be a ferocious killer if given the chance; after all, I was a kid sister — a more devious and dangerous creature has yet to walk the earth! I would never pop up over the walls of the fort and get shot by the enemy like that little kindergarten boy always did — what a dipstick … I would flank their base and attack with stealth and terror!

Or I would have, had they let me. But I was a girl, and girls either played nurse or they had to STFU and make mud pies. They never actually told us that but it was implied, oh yes, it was implied.

So I hit upon an idea that would allow me to get in the game for real. All I needed was a really, really cool gun — a gun so cool they would have to let me play. A gun like none of the boys had. One of those that instead of firing only one shot at a time would fire pzzzzzz-a-zzzzzzz-a-pttt … thirty or forty rounds a minute! I begged my mom to get me a gun for Christmas, or my birthday … I would be the best, most obedient kid if only I could have this gun.

I got a bra and underwear.

Chukka Boots

I got a 3 day suspension from school back in the early seventies for putting bells in the laces of my Chukka boots. I can’t imagine what possible danger I was to anyone but they decided I was in dire need of a lesson in life. And pretty much the only lesson in life I got out of it was that if I didn’t act or look like everyone else, I got to sit at home at watch games shows on television.

So there’s that.

I wore my Chukka boots with neon orange socks — and I wore them with every outfit I owned; skirts, dresses, jeans … didn’t matter. The only fashion requirement I had at the time was whether my mom liked it — if my mom hated it, it was cool. And if my sister had the same exact outfit in another color … I loved dressing alike and she hated it. To this day the only time I can get her to dress alike is on our birthday, and that’s only because it’s in the Constitution or something that you have to.

The reason I bring this up is that it finally occurred to me (much, much later in life) that my dressing the way my mom hated was my way of declaring my independence in some tiny, insignificant way; while dressing exactly like my sister was my way of holding on to what was known, what was comfortable and secure. Plus, we switched classes in school so it helped fool the teachers.

Rotary Dial Phones

I miss the old, black rotary phones. Those things were serious, you got a call on that and it was by-God a phone call. I remember the wonderful bripp-pppp-ptt of the dialer when you dialed, and woe to the person who messed up a number — it could take forever to redial. And the ring! So loud it could wake the dead, it was the sound of importance, this was no idle chitchat … this was business.

Any call after 9 pm was bad news, no one ever called late unless it was news that one of our 180 various aunts or uncles (perhaps a slight exaggeration) who were all at least 300 years old (okay, another slight exaggeration) had kicked the bucket. Which, in turn lead to a housefull of various seldom-seen kinfolks and elderly aunts who would pinch my cheeks and call me Mickey. The only bright side was there was usually lots of food.

Another thing about the old phones was, once pre-adolescent phone conversations started, there was no privacy. These babies did not have stretch cords that would allow you to bring the phone into your room, thus thwarting your sister or brother from overhearing who it was you had a crush on that week. The curly cord that extended from the handset to the phone itself was not flexible, nor was it designed to be. If you tried to make it go a centimeter further than it was capable of, the curly cord would straighten out-never to return to it’s former curly self. And Mom would get pissed.

“I just can’t have anything nice, can I?”

Those phones were designed to stay in the phone nook — a recess in the hallway that came equipped with a shelf and a hard-backed chair-engineered for a short and to-the-point phone call; regardless of how important what Phyllis said to Mary at lunch was at the time.

Then, one magnificent Christmas came the princess phone. That sleek, pink phone with the elastic cord and lightweight handset. Perfect for marathon phone calls and easily transported into the closet for privacy.

It pretty much made up for the not getting the machine gun.

Once A Brat, Always A Brat

Funny the things you remember. These days girls don’t have to worry about not getting to play war — they can go online and frag as many enemies as their hearts desire, and in full-color gore to boot.

And they don’t need stretchy cords to gossip with their friends, what with Twitter and Facebook … although I’d bet they have even less privacy than we did. I am personally glad as hell that we didn’t have phone video or Youtube when I was growing up — there’d be just too much to have to explain to the kids.

But some things never change, I will be making my sister dress alike on our birthday even though we only have another year until we qualify for the senior discounts at most places and come January I will be a grandmother for the first time.

I may be old, but I’m still a brat.