Of course, we didn't like going to bed, what little kids do? So as Mommy would put us to bed, we would use our extremely good persuasive skills and ask Mommy "Can you tell us a Mommy story?" Sometimes Mommy would oblige us with a story of her childhood, which we always found fascinating and I think I still remember most of them. When we couldn't get her to tell a story, we would try hunger "Mommy, I'm hungry!" to which Mommy would kindly get us a few slices of cheese. If this didn't work, we'd try "Mommy I forgot to brush my teeth!" "Mommy I forgot my stuffed animal in the living room" and anything else you can think of. Mom tried her hardest to get us to calm down at bedtime, and played many different types of music to get us to calm down, this usually worked well, such as instrumental music (from the CD Graft); Titanic music (but only if she skipped the scary loud songs); Enya music; and my personal favorite, my "Baby Song" Blue Eyes by Elton John.
None of us really know what was so exciting about night, but something about the sun being down made our inner vampire come out and we were ready to play the night away the second Mommy (after our constant badgering) left the room and said goodnight. Bedtime=playtime in our eyes. We came up with many games to play in the dark, a few stand out in my mind the most:
(Mom and Dad, here are all the awesome games we were playing before you came in and forced us to go to sleep!)
The Cats and Dog game: Jessica was always the Dog, and Ashley and I were Cats. The cats were allowed onto the top bunk bed, but the Dog was definitely not! The Dog could however, jump up and try to reach us while we were on the top. Basically it was a game of chasing, and all the while we would make "Meow" noises and Jessica would make Dog noises. It was terribly thrilling, and we played that as often as we could convince Jessica, because who doesn't want to be chased around by Jessica acting like a Dog?
Murder: This game was usually just between Ashley and I. We had seen a scene from Braveheart when Mom was watching it, where his wife was tied up to a stake and then these bad guys came up and sliced her neck and her head fell forward all limp and dead. It was quite traumatizing to us, so naturally we had to act it out. So, usually on the top bunk bed, one of us got to be the girl and the other one was the murderer bad guy. The girl would stand straight against the wall, then the bad guy would take his finger, and swipe it across the girl's neck (fake knife) and then the girl's head would fall forward. We usually dramatized this even further by falling forward onto the bed face first. It was quite exciting to be murdered! Then we would switch places and do it again so both of us got the chance to be murdered. It sounds quite morbid now...but back then it was quite thrilling!
Spying on Jessica: This wasn't just a night-time game, in fact it happened all the time. Ashley had a pair of binoculars, and I had a notepad, and Ashley would "Spy on Jessica" and tell me all the maliciously evil things Jessica was up to and I would write them down. I remember one particular night when Jessica was sleeping in the hallway inbetween the two bedrooms (I'll explain why later), and she was making up songs and singing them to herself, so we wrote them down while she sang them, and snickered to each other the whole time until she discovered us and we scurried back to our beds before she could harm us.
Sneaking into Becca and Laura's room: So when Jessica slept in the younger twins' room, Ashley and I would get bored with our usual chatting and murder games (dying is only so much fun), and we knew that Becca, Laura and Jessica were probably having way more fun than we were, so we made a game out of being very very sneaky, and crawling and silently as we could into Becca and Laura's room. If they were talking or playing, they usually didn't notice us until we were right next to their bed. I don't know why it was so fun, but even just laying there next to their bed without them knowing we were there was pretty exciting! Eventually we'd let ourselves get found (Jessica was usually on to us), and we'd get chased out of the room, which was of course what we wanted to happen.
These are just the stories I remember, so I asked the other girls, and Becca and Laura reminded me of a few more:
Laura: "I remember BEFORE bedtime, we'd get into our footy pajamas and slide down the staircase and somehow all five of us were able to go down at the same time. It had to be footy PJs otherwise you'd get rug burn.
I also remember Becca and I playing barbies because we thought Dad was far away in the living room and then he caught us and it was the scariest thing because he (somehow) crept up on us even though he was big. Silent and deadly"
Becca: "I remember talking SO much underneath the blankets and jumping on our bed that we would check if mom and dad were in their bedroom. A lot of times Dad would be sitting in the hallway on his laptop and that was enough to know that he was watching! Those moments were terrifying, yet so thrilling to sneak around!
I remember the infamous story-telling by Jessica, where we would create imaginary worlds based off of themes, or listen to a tale she made up right there and then. We would talk for hours and hours, but it was the giggling that caught us!"
Speaking of getting caught, punishments are also quite vivid in our memories!
As you can tell, we kept Mom and Dad on their toes at bedtime, and they had to make up different ways to get through to us and get us to settle down.
Some punishments we remember are:
1. Mom sitting in the hallway with both doors open so she could see all of us and make sure we didn't get out of bed or talk
2. Getting our pillows and blankets taken away for a little while so we would want them back and go to sleep. This one was quite creative Mom, it really did create the effect you wanted. Except that one time when you fell asleep watching TV and we still didn't have our pillows back. Ashley devised a plan though and we successfully completed our mission of sneaking into the living room and saving our pillows, blankets, and stuffed animals from the couch without being seen.
3. Sleeping in the Hallway: Mom would take the troublemaker and make them sleep in the hallway as punishment for acting up. Because this was usually Jessica, (common denominator), the hallway became such a usual place of sleeping for Jessica that she began to like it a lot, and started asking to sleep in the hallway every night, it was like her own little room away from all the twins.
4. Dad coming in and telling us to go to bed. This was quite effective, mostly because Dad wasn't home all the time and he was ten times scarier than Mom (Mom wasn't very mean ;).
I remember one time Ashley and I had been making "nests" where we take all of our bedding and create this nest around us to sleep in, and I somehow ended up on the top bunk with Ashley, and after goofing around somehow I ended up tangled up in blankets, hanging upside down with my head almost touching the bottom bunk (it was an L-shaped bunkbed), we were giggling hysterically and uncontrollably. I remember looking across the room at the slightly open door, and from my upside down view, suddenly realized that Dad's face was peeking out in the crack in the door, just watching us. I tried to warn Ashley but I couldn't stop laughing, so even when I said her name she couldn't sense any warning. I don't remember what happened after that, but I remember feeling terrified and very much "in trouble."
5. Spankings: These weren't terrible, but they were usually only used when every other option had been exhausted, sometimes spankings were the only way for the parents to show they were serious and done with us playing and giggling the second they left us alone. One story stands out in the minds of the younger girls the most with regards to this. From the eyes of Becca, here's the last story I'll share:
"There is this sudden, surprised feeling a little child gets from being thrown into the air, upside down. Add a huge spank onto that and you get a sobbing little 3-4year old Becca. I don't remember much of the conversation afterward, where Jessica confessed that she was the one to blame for all the noise and messing around (that time). Poor Dad had to apologize for grabbing the wrong child, but hey, when you are in the dark and there are three little girls under the covers, what are you supposed to do? Grab 'em all at once? No, grab a bony little leg and lift them up! It shouldn't be to hard-6 legs-they ALL deserve it, don't they? No (as he soon learned).....but it had to be me for some reason. Mostly, I recall the crying afterwards. It was mostly from the injustice in my little mind (even though I had it coming) that I was the one to get spanked that way. I think I wished Laura and Jessica to be sprung into the air and spanked too! Maybe even more aggressively! Now, ten years later, we can always laugh and chuckle at those good old days. It's one of the stories that we won't ever really forget, because I don't think we can with Jessica's little voice saying, "Dad, it was me."
Well, that's the detailed explanation of why we were holy terrors at bedtime!
I couldn't find the picture of us going down the stairs in our footie pajamas, but here is one where we are stuffing ourselves with sugar and being pretty cool with our nutty bar-ice cream cone combinations.
-Elizabeth Fluegel
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