Cousins..who could ask for anything more?

COUSINS MAKE THE BEST FRIENDS and CO-CONSPIRATORS

We all grew up with our cousins. For the longest time I didn’t know the difference between my cousins and my sisters and brothers. We all spent the night together so much I thought we were just one big family who took turns with mamas and daddies. We didn’t just play “musical chairs” we played ‘musical houses’.  The girls would spend all day building a playhouse of boards placed on tin cans to design our ‘house’ under the two big oak trees beside my house appropriately named “The Oak Tree”. If we did skip a night of spending the night together (we didn’t call it sleepovers) the last thing we would say to each other at the end of the day was, “See you in the morning at The Oak Tree!” Then we would take turns walking each other halfway home which could sometimes take hours until we finally figured out we would all have to walk at least halfway home alone..that is usually when we came to the conclusion it would be best if we just spent the night at someone's house. That choice was made by whose mama was cookin' the best supper. 

The Oak Tree was magical. We would build our playhouse all morning and would sweep the dirt and cook our mud pies and we even had some vines in the pretend bathroom and if it had rained that day we would stand under them and shake for a ‘shower’…something none of us had in our real houses. It was a master piece, The Oak Tree. It was our secret club. Which drove the boy cousins completely INSANE. They considered it a foreign country that needed to be attacked and terrorized at every opportunity and they never failed to be creative in their plans for destruction. This often resulted in mind games, like convincing us the place was haunted by a giant monster with a size 24 shoe. That has not been disproved completely to this day. We all saw the shoe print and no one could ever explain how it got there. It was obviously a one legged giant monster because there was only the one footprint, but it was enough to have us screaming and running for safety. Clever they were..the boy cousins”.

Just like in real life, the girls were nesting and building a thing of stability and beauty while the boys were trying to see who could kill each other first on the makeshift obstacle course they had built to use their bicycles as deadly weapons.  JTD,“Jumping The Ditches” was the equivalent of the most extreme sport today. I don’t even know how many bones were broke or dislocated over the years…too many to count..and they DID NOT report most of them because it was against the rules to JTD and the parents would seriously WYB, 'Whip Your Butt" if they found out.  Of course being the wonderful little caretakers and responsible citizens we were, the girls would always immediately report all offenders.

That led to the inevitable and ultimate final battle between the girl cousins and the boy cousins. You could see the smoke coming out of the boy’s ears with thoughts of revenge while we just stayed up all night giggling and preparing for the attack. This would go on forever, until we would all join forces and put our differences aside for the UATE, "Ultimate All Time Experience".  According to the parental units, the most dangerous thing we could do besides go swimming after eating (I don’t know how we all lived through that) was to go play on the DSP "Deadly Sawdust Piles". We grew afraid of three things in life:  panthers, hell and the DSP. The more dangerous they said it was and how bad we would be punished if they found out we played on the DSP, the more we would plot how we could go play on the DSP.

The parental units AND grandparental units would say, “Sure those big sawdust piles look fun, but they are old and they are rotting from the inside out and they will cave in and you will be buried, your lungs filling up with rotted sawdust and you will choke and eventually die a horrible death by suffocation.” And we would say, “Oh yeah, we are DEFINITLY going to the forbidden DSP now!!!!!” 

 I think back and wonder...wasn’t there just one logical older cousin that could have spoke up and said, “Hey, maybe this is not such a good idea”?  Nope, there was not. So we all found a way to play on the DSP at least once a week and some weeks we didn’t get caught and there were no WYB sessions. Good times.

The thing about growing up that close to your cousins is that it last a lifetime. A perfect example is my cousin Dalton and my brother Gator. I wasn't even old enough to remember all the trouble they got into as boys but I know what they are doing now and I am sure it closely resembles their childhood.  The Gator and Dalton have been 'workin' (and I use that term loosely) on and off together since they are both semi-retired and here's a recap of a normal work day for them:

Meet early..the earlier the better...have some coffee and maybe a bite of breakfast..discuss upcoming 'things that need to be done'...have some more coffee...talk a little more about things to be done and decide on one...have some more coffee...discuss other things of great importance..the weather..the neighbors, religion and sin in general and how they could fix it all...have a little something more to eat and a half a cup of coffee...change original thing to be done to something else after re-evaluation of weather and level of arthritis. About 2 hours later..start 'thing to be done'. First stand and discuss 'thing to be done' in great detail and what is actually required to do the job...decide you don't have it...go back.. get more coffee and discuss 'what we gonna do now'? Pick new 'thing to be done'. Go to lunch. Talk with all surrounding patrons at local café about what the new 'thing to be done' and decide if it is truly a priority. Go back have a cup of coffee and discuss new 'thing to be done' and whose opinion from the cafe you really trust and what was the underlying motive for their suggestions.  Decide it is too late to do new thing now and discuss what time to meet in the morning to discuss the new 'thing to be done' in more detail over a cup of coffee.  Decide it needs to be early, the earlier the better. Discuss what happened to the day because it just seemed to fly by.  End the day with the usual farewell greeting, “Meet me at The Oak Tree in the morning."

I love my cousins...say AMEN if you do too!!!