…she started doing what SHE did best. 

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What Stacy did best (from my adult perspective now) was stand up for herself.

My “little” sister has always been the tough one. Back in our cul-de-sac world on sixteenth avenue, the Smith kids would recruit her to play backyard football… on the front line. They used to call her “Brick”. Stacy was tough and she didn’t give up.

I didn’t see her that way at all. Back then, I was so wrapped up in the “stupid fat pig” shit from Bruce, I doubt I had any idea about who Stacy was as a person. I saw her as just this annoyingly loud thing I had to navigate around and/or simply put up with.

Yea… just another thing to put up with.

It would be a few years yet before I began to strike out and start living life on my own terms. But that day I stood up to Bruce, something in me decided to not put up with his shit anymore.

Stacy didn’t put up with shit like that. I should have been taking cues from her on standing up for myself instead of avoiding, navigating around and putting up with shit keeping me down. She certainly didn’t put up with being tricked into not getting to watch Love American Style. Not without a fight anyway.

Once she realized the time and television program schedule (after Bruce had reminded her of it) Stacy marched over to the TV, looked at me sternly and said “Were going to watch Love American Style”. She then changed the channel from the commercial playing on channel six to the commercial playing on channel four. “It’s on channel four in ten minutes so we are going to keep the TV on channel four.” She turned back to face me and crossed her arms in defiance.

This wasn’t my first battle over what to watch on TV with my little sister. I knew I could always pull out the “I’m much bigger and stronger than you” card if I wanted to. But that would lead to more drama and shouting and crying and parents… so I started with an attempt at distraction.

“Hey! we were watching Gilligan’s Island.” I complained. “Don’t you want to finish watching that first?”

Stacy was undeterred. “I don’t care about Gilligan’s Island, it’s an old one anyway.” She then doubled down with a righteous declaration of fair play. “You got to watch your stupid Hogan’s Heroes yesterday, today we are going to watch Love American Style.”

So it was going to be like that.

I got up and turned the TV knob back to channel six and sat back down. Stacy let out a loud “Harumph” and turned the knob to channel four again. I got up… one more time, turned it back to channel six and removed the knob. I sat down.

Usually this was enough to make Stacy give up. Well… she never really gave up, but she had little choice but to acquiesce to the obviously superior physical power. Unless of course she decided to scream and cry (which would get Clark crying too) and bring Mom out to shut off the TV and then nobody got to watch anything. Then when Dad got home, she would try and make her case for whose fault it all was (mine) and that might jeopardize the evening TV watching privileges. For all of us.

Bruce didn’t care.

Clark was five.

This was all between me and Stacy and if Stacy only knew how much I cared about what was on TV after dinner, she might have seen her biggest bargaining chip. Especially when Star Trek was on. I LOVED Star Trek and so did Bruce. There was never any debate about it but there was a risk that Dad would decide to turn the TV off for the entire evening as punishment if we were caught fighting. Especially if we made Clark cry.

That day I stood up to Bruce, Clark did cry… so did Stacy.

Bruce was out cold and I was scared because I had just done something to send this newly declared stand up guy into the unknown. To a place where no Brian had gone before.

To be continued…