As a youngster, I was quiet. Shy, almost to the point of mouse-dom. Each day at school I would try to hide, be invisible and never make a peep. I had maybe one or two friends at a time, and those people were always the leaders in the friendship. I was a sidekick for sure.

One of the ways I blended into the background, is that I rarely left my seat in class. The horror of horrors was to ask the teacher to go to the bathroom. So in all of my elementary school I had only a few trips to the loo.

I was a latchkey kid with a younger brother who I tortured in ways I am dreadfully embarrassed about as an adult and I have apologized so many times I can’t count.

He arrived home after me and sometimes I would lock him out and not let him in the house and again, be a total booger to him in general. I am not sure why.

There would be a day where he would seek revenge on me, but back to the ADHD brain for a moment. ( I do excel at flitting around as I tell a story.)

For many of the things I did, my brain allowed me to forget such times and happily go on my way. Sometimes believing that I was a good sister.

One moment was completely forgotten by me into my forties and only came back to bite me at the most inopportune time.

I’d invited my beau, who has since become my husband to a dinner held at the house my mother was housesitting at in the company of my brother and sister in law. Boyfriend was pretty new to knowing my family and me come to think of it.

Somehow the topic came up of how I was a child, and my brother pulled a story from the dungeons of the past and carefully enacted his revenge.

He recounted how I would torture him by not letting him into the house, sometimes it was raining, or snowing or most harshly he had to go to the bathroom. I had forgotten all of it.

Then he came at me, “Remember that time when the roles were reversed and I got into the house before you? A day when you had to go to the bathroom really bad.

Again, no recollection.

“I remember you begging to be let in, trying to threaten me from the other side of the door about what you you would once you got in and what kinds of punishments I could expect in return.”

Still nothing.

“I remember how you pleaded that you had to go and this and that and there was a moment when your face changed. You stared me dead in the eyes and peed your pants, never breaking eye contact in the most sick and psychotic way.”

By now the table was roaring in laughter, myself included, as I had been spared this memory for the majority of my life. My newly installed boyfriend took in in stride and it was a bonding moment for my brother and me.

“I totally deserved that,” I said after the laughter died down. “I could totally see myself doing that. I hated going to the bathroom at school, and I did torture you so. Well played, little brother.”

“Pretty sure you got me back the next day, but at least I knew then that sometimes the tables could be turned and I had a fighting chance.

Not sure why my brother and I fought so much as kids as he is one of my favorite people now. Maybe it was the era, the very nerve of having to deal with and take care of a little brother. There have been times when I was the instigator, throwing a fork at him at dinner and having it stick into his face, and then times when he threw a dart near me and it stuck into the top of my head. So we are somewhat lucky to be alive and mostly even and we don’t fight like that anymore.

I’d let him in the house if he had to go, and I like to think he’d let me in if I did. We have older bladders and more worldly understanding.

I can’t be sure though. Tally ho.