10 CREATIVE NONFICTION Theodore was a wonderful big brother who hardly ever fought with me. We each enjoyed coming each other’s way, I guess—modifying each other’s interests. If he wanted to play a game where we were dinosaurs, we would—only there would be mommy and daddy and baby dinosaurs. If he wanted to play Legos, I did too, as long as my horses could also have something important to do. Eden never got this consideration, and she took to provoking us to get our attention. So there I was, “stuck” with the little sister I had never learned to treat well, with no place of retreat—for who on earth could keep her from following me into Theodore’s room if she wanted to? The memories are already blurring in my mind. Is the Lego store game we played with Theodore’s Bionicle fi gures and everyone’s Webkinz a composite memory, or truly a specifi c instance? How many, many times we “sold” the same weapons to the same fi gures, never deviating from what was on the boxes, never (as well as I can recall—maybe we had a fi ght about it) giving Gresh Kiina’s trident just to do something different. We would cast our Webkinz as characters from PBS Kids shows and parody episodes, especially Martha Speaks. And how would school have shaped her? Would she have been studious and ostracized, like me and Theodore? Would school and friendship have come easily to her, like for Eden in her elementary years? Would prealgebra or literature have given her more trouble? If she had had to read My Antonía in seventh grade, would she have had any better idea what was going on than my class did? If she had had to read Hero’s part in Much Ado about Nothing, what
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