The Oldest Child

There is a lot of commiseration for the middle child, and the youngest always complains about being the baby. I only have sympathy for the oldest, the experimental child, the brave forerunner for younger siblings.

*I don't know how I ever made it to the over fifty group.*

I was the experimental child for Mother and Aunt Margie. I remember lying in bed with a stomachache and slight fever. I overhead them talking about buttermilk.

"Merilyn," Aunt Margie said, "Buttermilk is great for sick kids. It brings down fevers."

"But Margie, I don't have any. And, the stores are closed."

I drifted off to sleep as pans rattled. Next thing, they woke me. Mother helped me sit up as Aunt Margie handed me a cup.

"Drink this up. It'll make you feel better."

*Hot chocolate!*

I obliged with a big gulp followed by a sudden ascending burst of --.

They glared at me. The experiment didn't work. But, after all it wasn't real buttermilk. They had made it. They warmed up milk, put in a stick of butter and when it melted they rushed the brew to my lips. *Years later, I threw up in Uncle Bill's car when we passed a sign saying, "Stop here for oatmeal and warm buttermilk." *

My brown hair was fine and hung straight. I didn't have the thick, glorified curls of the Shirley Temple rage. "We're going to give you a permanent." *The old kind. *

They washed my hair and worked some kind of smelly liquid through it. Strands rolled onto little cardboard curlers with ends that folded back to hold them in place. I readied for the bottled potions of experimentation.

I knelt against the bathtub. I leaned my head over the cold porcelain edge as far as my short neck could stretch. They handed me a towel. "Hold this tight against your face so you don't burn your eyes." *It was like POW torture.* The smell was gross and smothering in the scratchy towel wasn't my idea of having a good time. * I thought this was Aunt Margie's way of punishing me for cleaning the toilet with her toothbrush.*

I held the towel against my face. Each curler was doused with ammonia. "Hold that towel tight." It took forever. The last step, neutralizer was finally applied. They unrolled the curlers and my frizzy hair stank for days. Mr. Bauer pinched my cheek and said, "Your hair looks like an explosion in a mattress factory, kid." * Part of his remark was retaliatory for the time he'd bent over and I bit him on the behind.*

Towels and gross smells became instruments of experimentation. The next time I got sick, Mother and Aunt Margie dropped gobs of Vicks Vapo-Rub into a cauldron of steaming water. My head was positioned directly over the experimental vapor and my head draped with a towel to catch the cure-all fumes. *I think that's when I developed my first pangs of claustrophobia.* My eyes burned even with the lids shut and the fumes were more intense then those of my permanent.

Skinned knees filled with cinders. Another opportunity for experimentation. Straight hydrogen peroxide dumped right into the wound. *"Fizzle, foam, boil and bubble. When shall we three meet again?" * The cinders festered up and out. Nothing could withstand the direct blast.

The worst case of experimentation was Mother's cure for athlete's foot. The tiny raised spots of fungus in-between my toes dissolved in a glass bowl filled with iodine-laced CN. *The stuff we used to disinfect the latrines at Girl Scout camp.* It didn't take long for my toes to turn numb and the bumpy skin to blister and peel off.

*"Finally!"* I'll never forget the day my sister arrived. My parents said they were concerned over my reaction. I stepped into the living room to meet the next-in-line. I looked down at her, then up at them and smiled with the knowing grin of a Cheshire Cat.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: I write short story and poetry and over the past few years I have placed pieces in over 75 publications, both in print and on-line, in the US along with Ireland, UK, South Wales and Australia. I've placed several commentaries in newspapers. In addition to publications, I've won numerous writing awards, the most recent: NJ Wordsmith's Competition, Inscriptions Magazine, Rhapsody Magazine, Florida Writing competition. In between writing for adults, I manage to write children's stories -- mainly for my grandchildren, but they seem to have spread to my teacher friends who use them in their classrooms. Thank you notes from the children are fantastic rewards.

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