A Little Rebel Something

Margie started talking about her brother Bernie today, what a bright, sweet guy he was, so I asked her how she and her brother came by their joyful personalities in a household full of yelling and anger.

“Well the yelling and anger, of course that was my mother. You get born one way or the other. You’re either a fighter or a dodger. You can’t change your nature. My mother was a fighter, and my sister Helen was a fighter, so they fought all the time. My father was a dodger, but he was a nebbish. A lovely person, but he didn’t want yelling, so he let my mother run over him. When my mother yelled at him, he would give in. I can’t think of the word for what he was.” Margie demonstrated by slumping in her chair, her head almost on the table, her mouth pulled down.

Browbeaten? I asked. 

“Yeah, that’s it. Bernie and I watched him get browbeaten, and we wanted to be dodgers like our dad, but with more backbone. We wanted a bit of fun. You have to have backbone to go out and have a bit of fun, so that’s what we did.” She lifted her head and threw up her hands, laughing.

“We’d go outside, whatever the weather. Bernie had his guy friends, they made a lot of noise yelling and playing guy things. I had my friend Johanna, we had some rhymes we'd say to jump rope, or we’d take a piece of white rock and draw squares on the sidewalk, the ones you jump in….”

Hopscotch?

“Yeah, that’s it. Hopscotch. And suddenly all the troubles inside the house are gone. There's nothing in life but a bit of fun. After you grow up, you find other ways to have fun, but you have to have a little rebel something, a little backbone to go out and find a what do you call it….”

An escape? 

"Yeah. An escape. And a bit of fun."