His grandmother put his little sisters up to it! She got them to open up the family’s pop-tent trailer we were taking a few days later, make up one of the beds, (short-sheeted it, too, mind you), and throw rice in the sheets!
But then, about fifteen years ago, I happened to mention to Richard that one of my earliest memories was of the day my parents moved into the house they’d just built that I grew up in in Bethesda, MD. Lots of commotion and comings and goings, but what I remember clearly, from age 3 3/4, was of being hustled off out of the way along with some other kids into one bedroom where there were mattresses propped up against the walls and a dresser next to them, and being told, “Don’t slide down the mattresses!”
And then they closed the door.
Whaddya think we were gonna do? I mean, c’mon!
I remember the drawers being pulled out a bit to make steps to ascend the dresser (I may have contributed to that), while some bigger kids (memory is fuzzy here who) simply clambered right straight to King of the Mountain status–and then I remember having a grand and glorious time sliding down after them, the thrill no doubt intensified by the knowledge that, while I was copying the big kids, I was also doing exactly what I’d been told not to. It was a revelation of the possibilities and fears of disobedience. Which is no doubt why I remember it.
“They did yell at us. ‘I told you not to slide down the mattresses!’ I was there. I remember it.”
Wait–what?!
His parents had lived across the street from mine in apartments in DC when both couples had arrived in town as newlyweds; they’d been friends ever since. His folks were helping mine move that day.
Richard was 4 1/2, older and wiser, but he did not set a good example.
And so we have a shared near-earliest memory. Of bouncing on the beds.
A number of years later, his maternal grandma knew we couldn’t yell at his little sisters after our honeymoon (if you haven’t read about that skunk, go, click, don’t miss it) if she had been the one who’d put them up to it. The little stinker.
Practically an arranged marriage, don’tcha think?