Growing Up Eighties, Chuckie, 2

The second unintentional attempt on Chuckie’s life took place three years later. Room: the bedroom upstairs. Weapon Used: Afghan. Suspect: Yours Truly.

We were playing hide and seek and Chuckie was cheating, as always. We had limited space, so to make the game more challenging, I demanded that the seeker (always Chuckie. I was bossy) must keep their eyes closed. So there I was, hiding in my tiny closet with the door slightly ajar. Peeking through the gap, I saw Chuckie, eyes open. And he wasn’t even supposed to start looking for me yet. I was counting to ten, on seven, when he walked into my room, eyes open, arms straight in front of his body to keep with the illusion of his eyes being closed.
That’s it.

“New Rule!” I stomped out of the closet.

The seeker (again, always Chuckie) had to wear a blanket over their head to prevent cheating.

In my defense, if Chuckie weren’t such a cheater, the second attempt on Chuckie’s life would have never taken place. Of course, the third attempt would have become the second, and so on. Still, I would have accumulated fewer attempts.

The afghan was scratchy, full of the colors of the seventies and matched the couch in the living room that would later reside in my first apartment, second apartment, and second apartment dumpster after we had to hack it into parts to get it out the door after graduation. It was orange, brown, tan and black.

With the afghan in place, Chuckie was liberated from his cheating past, and I didn’t really care if he started looking for me at the count of seven instead of ten, because he was never going to find me.

I heard noises (from the closet again. There weren’t many places to hide) and ran from the closet to find my brother, still covered in the afghan, at the bottom of the stairs.