for marcie

While growing up it is a rite of passage to be tortured under the hands of your older siblings and family members. At least that's how it went in my family. I had my fair share of whoopings and emotional scars, but it was nothing like the pain endured by the younger ones in my family. Luckily for me I was one of the eldest. Today I look back fondly on one particular youngin' from the family, for she was the target of much torture. She flew the coupe this past Friday to start her first year at college. Damn, I'm getting old.

There were about eight of us, all cousins from our mother's side. One set of cousins had three boys and one girl, being the youngest. Another set included three girls. Then there was me, the lone ranger. I am discounting my sister because she sucks and is irrelevant to the story. I was the oldest child out of this group of eight, so I had a considerable amount of power and respect among them. That's over now, but the memories are sweet.

We all loved the family get together's because that was prime play time. Our games consisted mostly of choosing one of the runts and making them be our tool. For example, in the game of tag, they would be "it" every single god forsaken time. For hours too. We would make them chase us long after one would have thought the game technically ended. We took tag to new levels. There was this game of uber tag we played once, around my grandmother's apartment complex. Our prime victim, one of my youngest female cousins, really was the target of and basis behind our evil childhood games. In our game of uber tag, we pretended that she was a monster and made her chase around the apartment complex. In her mind, this was no game, but to us it was sheer exhilaration.

For hours on end she chased after us in complete hysterics, crying and screaming. The rawness of her emotion only fueled us; we really became immersed in to our roles since she was playing the part of the monster so well. Her face was bright red with tears and snot dripping down it, she actually did look sort of monster-esque. I know it's wrong, but man oh man was that fun! We kind of made the game a tag/hide-and-go-seek hybrid. So there were, hiding in the laundry facility and we could hear her tearing through the complex shrieking like a banshee. Soon she would find us and we would run away giggling maniacally, only angering her further. That just made it more fun. However, the game would eventually become boring because she wouldn't be able to find us, but that was no problem; we would just make her aware of our presence and the games continued. Eventually we completely wore her out and we noticed this only because she was staggering and gasping for breath in between sobs. We were so evil, however, that we began taunting her in order for her to continue chasing us around. It worked for a little while too. This act was very much like poking someone with a stick over and over until they snapped.

Yeah, that's one good example of the torment endured by my baby cousin. There were other incidents believe you me, but there's only so many stories I can tell. It's odd to think that after being so cruel, which was purely a result of jealousy because everybody loved her and not the rest of us, my little cousin and I became so close when we got older. We aren't like soul sisters or anything, but I love her to pieces and I'm told the feeling is mutual. I even asked her, "Do you harbor any hatred for me whatsoever? Because if you do, I totally understand". And she insists that she doesn't, sweet little thing.

In fact, this may be sort of a stretch, but this tough love that was given may have turned out to be a good thing. That girl turned out to be a very driven and self motivated individual. Kind of anal, actually. But in a good way. Hence, she excelled in everything that she did and got a full ride scholarship to college. So you never know which way the ball will bounce; torment (in small doses of course) can either create a driven person who's set out to prove themselves or it can make you go postal, a la Eric Harris Dylan Klebold. It's a toss up. I guess my family got lucky.

Marcie, I love you baby girl. You rock. Oh, and sorry about the tag incident at grandma's.