Thursday, September 4, 2008

Retaliation

My first baby shower was a few weeks ago in Mayville. My sisters and mom had been working very hard to get the house, food, etc, ready for the party. Sister Annie had been slaving particularly hard on everything. She had made and mailed the invites, managed the RSVP’s, and been home for the days leading up to the shower and thus did a lot of the preparing. Two other characters that were also home were Krystal and Mom. But Mom had gotten food poisoning the day before the shower and was kind of out of commission, and Krystal is a force to be reckoned with and hard to convince to help out if she has better things to do (sorry, K, you know it’s true—I’m sure you won’t deny this). Also, Krystal clashes with Annie and does not like taking orders from her, simply on principal.

One of the battles that Krystal lost was to clean her bathroom, which is the main bathroom that guests would be using. Her and Anne are the only two who use that bathroom and Anne was busy doing other things. Krystal reluctantly scrubbed the place down.

The night before the baby shower Krystal casually asks Mom, “Mom, you don’t use the purple toothbrush in my bathroom, do you?”

It was a silly question. Mom has her own bathroom. Why would she keep her toothbrush in the bathroom on the other side of the house?

“No. Why would I?” Mom replied.

“Good, because I cleaned the bathroom with it,” said Krystal.

Annie’s heart stopped. “That’s MY toothbrush!” she exclaimed.

“Oops!” said Krystal.

Krystal cleaned the bathroom (including the soap-scummed glass-walled shower) with Annie’s toothbrush and then put it back in the cupboard, where Anne later picked it up and brushed her teeth with it.

Annie was livid. Krystal is always messing with her. For example, just a few weeks earlier, she and Krystal had to share a bed when they had a house full of overnight guests. As Krystal climbed into the bed she had said to Anne, “If you so much as touch me in the night, I will kill you!” She then proceeded to wrap her entire body in a blanket so as to assure no accidental skin contact in the night, even though it was July and the house isn’t air conditioned. Anne was so unnerved by Krystal that she slept on the very edge of the bed all night and didn’t get any sleep.

So when Anne noticed that her toothbrush was moved to the shelf below it’s normal place, she had figured that Krystal had moved it because she didn’t want their toothbrushes to occupy the same air space or something.

Krystal is still defending her actions to this day: “I put the used toothbrush on the shelf below our toothbrush place, where the cleaning supplies are! Besides, it was an old ratty thing anyway!”

Anyone who truly knows Krytal would take this defense with a grain of salt. Yes, she is not above making an honest mistake. But she is also an ace liar and not above playing such a trick on her sister if she was in the right mood.

When I heard the story, I asked Anne what she was going to do to retaliate. My first idea was to clean the TOILET with K’s toothbrush, but that could lead to serious disease. And even if I was mean enough to let Krystal get diseased (which I’m not), anything she gets could easily be spread to the rest of us. In fact, all of our ideas risked too much disease, so we’re at a loss. Krystal is constantly getting up in Annie’s hair like that—she steals her clothes, beauty supplies, sunglasses, etc., with no remorse. And Anne does not retaliate.

I told Anne that perhaps Krystal does this because she seeks Annie’s attention.

The day after the shower, Krystal brought her luggage down that she would take back to Michigan State with her for the new school year. Anne said that Krystal’s luggage could not leave the house without it first being searched for stolen clothing. A careful search found both Anne AND Mom’s clothing in the bags destined for East Lansing. As if enough damage hadn’t been done already!

When you have several siblings, one must always be ready for retaliation. I am prepared for a Krystal attack. I have an arsenal of embarrassing Krystal stories that I could share with the world with the click of a mouse. Perhaps this is why she hasn’t messed with me like this. Well, one time she DID symbolically murder my stuffed bear because I said that she couldn’t have him for her own. But I think she knew better than to really murder him. That would have called for retaliation.

I can’t say for sure whether Krystal did this on purpose, but I’m looking to you, readers, to slip Annie some aces up her sleeve to hold until the next Krystal attack.

3 comments:

Michigan Girl said...

April:
I could not believe that story when I was there and it came out. I'm not sure what I'd do if I were Annie, except maybe kill her. There is no way that is an honest mistake!
HLN

Anonymous said...

Blows. It should have come to blows. Were I Anne, Krystal would have been tackled out of her chair and it would have been on like Donkey Kong. An ambulance would have been called at the very least. K thinks she's so tough and she could beat up Anne but she doesn't factor in the "Christmas Story" effect. Remember when Ralphie had enough from the town bully and beat him senselessly?

Normally I'd say "same old Krystal" but stealing from your Mom is a new low. Especially when she just co-signed on your student loans. For shame.

April said...

Haha, Tommy.

Well, I think she only had one article of mom's clothing that may have been mistaken for her own. So I don't think she purposefully snatched mom's stuff...