My Sister Connie

Super Pig has several sisters, but she never sees them. That's life on a farm. Animals are bought and sold, most don't stay with family. But the animals get a whole new family. Super Pig has a big family on Hollyhock Farm and The Piney Woods. She thinks of Gussie Cow as a sister and Barney Horse as a brother, and I'm sure if she could see her real sisters, they'd be very close. Just like my sisters and I are. Maybe one day I'll write a story about SP rescuing her sister.

I've never really had to rescue my sister, though maybe I should have a few times. She gotten into a number of scrapes in her life. Or maybe I should say she has gotten scrapes. You see my sister Connie has this bad habit.
She falls....a lot. She's been doing it her whole life. I'm kind of amazed she's still alive.

(Now, before I tell the stories I'm going to tell, I want to asure you that I am not being mean. Connie has told these stories 100's of times herself, and she laughs as hard as everyone.)

The falling started young. While in school she fell getting on the bus everyday. She just couldn't seem to lift her feet high enough to miss hitting that last step. She'd go sprawling, books flying everywhere. I guess the bus driver just got used to waiting at our stop for her to pick herself up and find a seat.

She fell a lot in college  too. One day she fell down the steps of the main building and ripped both heels off her only pair of shoes. She had to walk 5 blocks, in her slippers, to the nearest shoe repair. I've lost count of how many times she has fallen down stairs.

My favorite story happened in downtown Omaha, Nebraska, that's where she went to college. It was at night, she was with 3 friends. As she began to cross the main street, she got to the middle and the light turned green for the cars to go. She didn't know what to do, keep going or go back. While dancing from side to side trying to make up her mind, she hit an icey patch of road and fell. Her friends had already crossed and one of them, Faith, yelled, "Go for it Andrews!" So she crawled on her hands and knees across  a street with 6 lanes of traffic.

Can you imagine being one of the people in a car watching this girl crawl across the street? In a dress no less, shredding her nylons and scraping her knees. One of her friends was laughing so hard she wet her pants. They had to go to a Wolworths store where they had a floor heater so her friend could dry out.

 She fell outside a theater one evening and knocked out a tooth. She let myself and a friend off, because we were a bit late, and went to park the car . I bought her ticket and waited for her in the lobby. I see her just leisurely walking in. I'm about to yell at her, "Hurry up!" When she says, "Guess what I just did," I could see blood on her lip, so I said, "You fell." She opens her hand and there is her tooth! She had started to run to the theater from the parking lot and the sidewalk was uneven. She caught her foot on a lifted piece and fell flat on her face. At least she got some money for that one. The building management paid to fix her tooth, replace her scratched glasses and the trips to the chiropractor, even gave her extra for pain and suffering.

And to show you what a trooper she is, she still went to the movie that night and sat through the whole thing with a lip the size of a grapefruit.

She went with a friend to Celebration and triped again on a sidewalk, she thinks; she has no memory of how it happened, again falling flat on her face. This time attractive young men ran to her aide. This time it might have been worth it. One insisted she sit and he get her some water. What a nice young man. When she got home she tried to act normal, just talking to me, telling me about her day, but I noticed all was not well. Her lip looked strangely familiar, like I had seen it look that way before. I said,"What happened to your lip?" She just looked at me with that look and I knew. "Did you fall again?!" What a mess her lip was for days. I took a picture of it to put on Facebook.

A number of years ago, early one morning she went to get air in her tires. As she squated to put the air in, she lost her balance. Air hoses used to be up high on these polls. You had to really pull on them to get them to your car and they were always rather taut. Well as she lost her balance she hung on to the air hose and went swinging around on it. Kind of like an uncoordinated Tarzan, yell and all, well more like screaming really. (I'm laughing so hard just thinking about it I can hardly type.)

 Wouldn't you have loved to be one of the guys in the truck parked next to her? Or be in a car driving by. The gas station was on a very busy street. I'm sure she was the talk of many an offfice that day.

One day I came home from work to find her sitting on the floor between the hall and the kitchen. She had taken the week off work and was painting the baseboard trim. I thought thats what she was doing, but she didn't have a paint brush and she was looking up at me with that look. I said, "What are you doing?" "Oh, I fell."  Why did I even have to ask. It seems she had mopped the kitchen floor and was trying to step over a wet spot and didn't quite make it. One foot went sliding and the other did not so she did the splits, banging her head on the hall wall in the process. She said she was seeing stars so sat down. See what I mean when I say it is amazing she is still alive?

My dear sister has been the source of great entertainment for our group of friends. We have laughed ourselves sick many an evening retelling the stories. They never seem to get old. These are only half of the stories I can tell, and will tell, but I'll save some for another time.

I'm glad Super Pig is around now. I think Connie is going to need her.