First exposure to Meatloaf.

A funny memory came into my head this afternoon while waiting for family and friends to come over for a movie...

My brother Matt must have liked this girl because when he found out she was going to be on vacation with her family for an extended amount of time, he said he would take care of the paper route that her little brother had. This boy was my age, but I didn't know him because he went to the private school. We were both in sixth grade. All I remember is being woken up VERY EARLY one Saturday morning with the news that my twin sister, Elizabeth and I were in charge of the paper route for the next 3-4 weekends. What's up with that? How did we get roped into this? I remember being really upset by it. For like two Saturdays Liz and I went to walk the route with Josh, the boy. Of course we had to get familiar with it before it was all our responsibility. Matt did his part too! He was the one who drove us to the trailer park where the route was. What a guy! I'm sure he returned home to enjoy another hour or three of sleep. Liz and I were crazy upset, but also slightly excited because this was a new boy in our class that nobody at our school knew. Soon Josh and his family left for vacation and it was up to us for what seemed like a month, but was probably only a couple of weeks. We had to get there insanely early so we could roll the papers and put them in bags. Then we had to load up the carrier which had pouches on both sides of the body when it was worn correctly. I'm pretty sure Liz wore that carrier. She always did the things that were harder. Like carrying heavy things, and going into the doctor's office first when we had appointments together, which was like all the time. Now it was time to get started. We walked through the trailer park talking to each other and probably fighting every once in a while because that's what twins do when they're upset: they take it out on each other. "You didn't get the paper close enough to the door!" "You never throw it right, just let me!" Being the good Christian girls that we were, I also remember being so afraid of doing something wrong to upset one of the residents. So whenever we thought the other one did something borderline crazy, we would snap at each other with a quick scolding.

One early morning I remember one of the trailer park residents was blasting a song that we had never heard before. It was catchy and the guy kept saying: "I won't do that. Oh no, I won't do that." We sang it the whole rest of the morning and wondered out loud what he meant by, "I won't do that..." What in the world is he talking about??? We found out later that week that it was Meatloaf, in fact, that we had heard, and we were still not sure what the song was all about. One day we sat in front of the radio that was in we room we shared, and listened to that song again. My mom walked by and said, "I don't like that song. Turn it off." What? Why? We didn't understand. But we turned it off anyway.

Huh. I just wanted to share this story because I thought the injustice level was off the charts. Big brothers can make little sisters do anything! I also thought it was funny that I remembered the Meatloaf song. This made me laugh out loud today. It would be funny to tell Matt what I remember about this incident, and then he'd probably set me straight about how it all REALLY when down. Even if I knew the truth, I'd still tell the story this way.