Careful With That Baton, Eugene

Is it true that if your daughters are near in birth order that when you buy something for one, you must purchase the exact same thing for the other?

This seems to have been a hard and fast rule in our household.

Mom sewed clothes for us kids. So when Brenda got a poodle skirt (Google it, I'm too tired to explain it), Deb also got one.This was the practice in all that I can remember.

So much so that passing strangers would ask if they were twins.

And so it was with the batons.

Now Dad had a Super8 video camera, so all I am about to say is recorded for posterity. Rod has the tapes so he can back me up.

You may remember these recording devices. Their main purpose seems to have been to record your children running so you can play it backwards for unsuspecting (and hapless) onlookers.

Pretty funny stuff (the first twelve or thirteen times you viewed it).

I really don't remember what I got I got that Christmas.

I do recall that we were at Grandma and Grandpa Trump's house on the hill above the Oakland Ave. fire station in Helena.

And that Rod got a football helmet. And the girls got batons. You know, those stick thingies that drum majorettes twirl with their fingers?

Now twirling is an art that only the truly dedicated can master. In  fact only one girl in our whole school could twirl the baton. Especially impressive when she would light both ends on fire.

So my sisters, being young children, got batons with handles on them. With a little wrist action you could actually make them spin around. And so they did. For our dad and his camera.

And one of the fond and hilarious memories of my childhood is of these two, lips pursed with intense concentration, showing off their twirling (?) skills for the camera.

And this scene is particularly memorable because their facial expressions are the exact mirror of Mom's when she would go in swimming. Which reflected a firm determination to keep her head, face, and freshly do-ed hair from getting damp.

Yeah, and that football helmet came in handy, by the way, when our little brother wandered into the scene and there was a silent rat-tat-tat of metal bouncing off plastic.

Which is even funnier when played backwards.

I just want to say (in his defense) that any (if any) questionable deeds carried out by Rod in later years can be laid directly at the doors of the baton-wielding maniac almost-twin sisters, Debi and Brenda.

Anyhow, if you buy batons for your daughters, buy their little brother a football helmet.