I am a middle child. I had 2 older brothers and 2 younger sisters. As the oldest sister I got stuck doing most of the chores but I always got new clothes. Worked well. I was also a tom boy. Anything my brothers could do I was sure I could do also and better. The only thing is I usually got hurt where they seemed to sail through the rough stuff with nary a mark, well not quite, I never broke anything as a child and they both did.
There wasn't a tree I wouldn't try to climb and I could play hockey with the best of them. Lots of my daredevil stunts were because of dares by my brothers, especially my younger brother.
When I was 5 he got stuck taking me sledding. At the top of a dirt street, with a busy paved street at the bottom, he held the sled while I climbed on. The hill looked as steep as the Rockies. "If a car comes just roll off the sled", he said. "It's easy". I didn't wonder then why he had me go first, just nodded and hung on. He gave me a push and away I sailed, faster and faster, Wow this was great. At the bottom of the hill I saw a car approaching the intersection right where I was headed. I looked to the side and it seemed in my 5 year old brain that I was going faster then light. I froze, what to do. Hunkering down I met the car head on and slid under the body while the man slammed on this brakes. My sled came out the other side... but I didn't. I do remember this man running down the street carrying me in his arms and sobbing for help. I remember very clearly telling him I couldn't see adding to his terror. Who knows where my brother disappeared to!
Now my mom didn't get shook easily. Raising 5 kids, ( well 4 because she was expecting my youngest) and having lost 4 others, plus escaping the boogie man she didn't get rattled easily. She took me from the man and told me to hush up, put my head under the sink to assess the damage and told me I would live. After some stitches and a huge sucker I was good as new. My mom Apologized to the man for her terrible children scaring him to death and grounded us both for the rest of week. My brother was really nice to me all week.
A month or so after we were playing in the neighbors sand box. My older brother got mad at me and threw sand in my face. Screaming for my mom I ran to the house as best I could with my eyes closed. We lived upstairs and it was an open outside staircase we had to use to get in the house from the back. I made it up the stairs and over the railing taking the fast way down to the pavement. More stitches, no sucker this time, and this time just my brother got grounded.
Fast fore ward maybe 2 years. My brother and one of this friends where playing with a bee bee gun and a pellet gun. Shooting at a metal sign the pellet ricocheted off the sign and into my ankle. Scar number 5 at the hands of my brother. This was the same brother that had me put on a winter coat and then would yell, "Run, you're the deer and I am the hunter," and then shoot me with the above mentioned bee bee gun.
The next year we were at the park and my brother and I were fighting because he had my barbie doll and was torturing it to make me mad. I rushed him and he threw me down a bank, soft bank, hard broken glass. More stitches and another sucker. Yippy. Running home from the Doctors with my Mom I felt so good I went to jump the fence I always jumped on the way home and missed ripping out my brand new stitches. 
Not even making it home we turned around and went back to the doctors who told my mom to lock me in a padded room until I grew up. Scar number 6. I did pretty good until the next year when he tripped me with a cane and I landed on the head of a nail sticking out on the porch. 3 more stitches. My mom forbid us to hang around for the rest of the summer. Gee, what fun was that!
I don't thinkmy brother intentionally attempted to kill me. Wereally like each other now a days. I was pretty pesky pre to hang around him and his friends playing kick ball and making skate boards out of old skates then playing dolls with the boring girls in the neighborhood.
For one thing, being poor I didn't have alot in doll department, and what I did had my brother had poked the breasts in all my barbies so they looked deformed and for another I was really good at skate boarding and kick ball and hockey and all other sports that required a lack of common sense and no fear. After all I had survived so far right! We also did the first snow boarding in the neighborhood by using a old surf board and riding it down the slopes as children. I was the only girl that could stand all the way down the hill most of the time.
So here I am, scarred and all the bumps and spills I took as a rowdy girl have come back to haunt me as an adult. I still look at certain trees and have to tell myself, No Gramma, you will not climb that tree......well except that tree that was just screaming to be the climbed last month, I made it to the top too! 
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