Early Memory

Being the only girl among 3 brothers I grew up doing boy things, bad boy things.  We'd wrestle and climb trees, occasionally we'd have mud fights and paint the walls inside with our muddy paws. Our favorite thing to do was to cause mischief.  The laundry hatch from our eyes had so much potential.  Whenever my parents went to wash our clothes they'd be mixed in with spoons, lost mail, our toys, anything we could shove down the shoot.  I was the second oldest so I was like co-captain.  My older brother Joel however always came up with the brilliant plans.  It was my job to follow in his foot steps, cover our tracks, and not to let us get caught.  Now Joel and I being deprived of some mischief lately went to our usual place of trouble, the laundry shoot.  First it was a roll of tape, then the tape container, then a note pad, a lamp, a teddy bear.  Finally we shoved a huge body pillow through.  I remember listening to the individual sounds each item would make against the wood of the shoot.  That  was the best part.  The spoons knocked, the paper lightly scraped the sides, big things would always make the kind of sound you make when you suck in but it would be deeper and more muffled.  The pillow was pretty exciting since it took us a few minutes to inch it into the hatch.  We could tilt our heads into the opening to listen carefully to it's sound.  We heard the muffled woop but something was missing the end sound.  Where was the p of the woooooop.  We ran down to the second floor hatch in the hallway, opened the door and saw the pillow.  We tried to pull it back but it wouldn't come through because the way the hatch was.  In order to pull it through, it would bend in half making the pillow twice as thick.  Joel looked at me and I knew what instantly what he thought.  We can't get caught.  No problem we just needed something that was heavy to push the pillow to the basement.  Shawn!  My younger brother, who just turned 3.  We grabbed his hand and helped him into the shoot. It'd be fun, like a roller coast Joel said.  Shawn smiled.  He slowly lowered him.  I had his left hand and Joel his right.  Counting to 3, we let him go and listened.  He screamed, it was a happy scream though and landed with a thud.  It was quiet.  We ran down to the basement clicked on the lights and saw Shawn's feet in a pile of clothes.  His head popped out as he laughed.  He made it safe, and so did our body pillow.