One sister’s story of love, laughter, and life with Williams syndrome.

Meet Erin

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Category: stories

  • Erin’s Document…

    I don’t know if my sister is applying for a new Medic Alert bracelet or if she’s putting herself up for adoption but I found this note that she wrote on a legal pad next to the computer. I had to write it down because it made me laugh so hard:

    Erin:

    X Diabetic

    X Has temper problems

    X Email is cheeto the clown

    ___________________________________

    ___________________________________

    ___________________________________

    ___________________________________

    ___________________________________

    Keep in mind that this was written on a large yellow legal pad yet Erin found it necessary to draw her own comment lines. You know–just in case.

  • Erin and The F Word…

    One day I came home to find that my mother was angry with me for reasons I was unaware of. She yelled, “Why were you CUSSING at Erin???”

    “Cussing at Erin??? What are you talking about??”

    “She said you yelled at her and said the F word at her more than once!”

    I racked my brain trying to figure out when I had dropped an F-bomb on my sister. I went over the day in my head, and all my interactions with her. What did I do? What did I say? Had I been angry with her earlier?

    Well let’s see…Before I left earlier I had been upset with Erin for not folding the laundry. I had asked her so many times that day to fold the towels–which seemed to be the only thing she would admit having any ability to fold. But still it was left undone and Erin remained glued to her chair in the living room, probably watching some music video for the umpteenth time.

    Wait a minute…Fold. Fold? Could that be it?

    After further investigation we discovered that yes, in fact, “fold” is Erin’s F word. Or used to be anyway. Rumor has it she doesn’t care to drop the standard F-bomb now and again when something needs emphasis or she’s really mad.

  • Erin McScrooge

    One time we took Erin and my son to a Monday Night Raw event. My son got hungry and asked for popcorn. I was out of cash and the concession stand wasn’t taking cards. Erin just happened to have a wallet full of cash so I asked her to borrow some and explained I’d give it back to her after the event.

    Erin looked into her wallet and, with a skinny finger, fanned through the dollar bills before closing it. She hugged it to her chest and patted it like a child as she looked me in the eyes and said, “No, I think I’ll keep it for me.”

  • Erin McFeeley

    One day a neighborhood friend and I took a walk around our block with Erin in tow. In most of my childhood memories Erin is never older than 6. It seems like I was about 10 or 11 which would have made Erin about 8 or 9, but anyway…

    My friend and I were walking around talking and not really paying attention to what Erin was doing. We started to get to the bottom of a large hill when we turned around to see Erin standing there behind us, little knobby knees healing from minor playing scrapes, missing a front tooth or two from a recent accident at daycare, but here’s the kicker–HER ARMS WERE COMPLETELY FULL OF MAIL!!!

    Yes, while my friend and I chatted about whatever it is that 10 year olds chat about, Erin had been opening mailboxes and gathering all of the mail that had just been delivered about half an hour before, leaving it in little piles here and there down the center of the road.

    (For some reason, Erin has always had an obsession with the mail. She collected every piece of junk mail that came to our house for years.)

    I felt a pang of adrenaline shoot through my neck as I made a mental checklist:

    1. make sure no one saw her do it,

    2. get Erin home before anyone figured it out.

    After a few moments in a huddle, we decided to break and put our plan into action. (It’s amazing how fast kids think when they’re trying to get out of trouble!)

    As if tiptoeing through a minefield, Erin carefully laid the last pile of mail down at the bottom of the hill and we slowly backed away from the crime scene, turning finally, to bolt and run as fast as we could home. We sprinted through every backyard, sideyard, creekbed and wooded area we could. There was no telling when Erin started gathering mail. We couldn’t risk confrontation with an angry neighbor!

    To my knowledge, no one ever confronted my parents about Erin’s attempt to help deliver the mail and thankfully she never did it again!

  • The Good Queen Erin

    Once I let Erin buy a GIGANTIC bag of Dum-Dum’s and she carried little baggies of them around with her everywhere. She walked up to Baylor and said “I hereby present to you, Good Sir Baylor, these 4 grapes, from the Good Queen Erin.” I almost died. 🙂

    Later on she got mad at Baylor for not sharing the laptop with her and she said “BAYLOR! I shared my DUM-DUM’s with you!”

  • Remember the Crickets…

    Confucious say: Cricket lucky…until Erin get hold of it….

    One summer day in the late 80’s, I decided to go outside and play in the backyard. As I stepped out onto our carport I looked down to see a dead cricket right in front of the door. Something caught my eye a few inches away. It was another dead cricket. Two feet later, another cricket. 

    I followed a trail of dead crickets that snaked its way around the house to the backyard. On the ground was Erin, squatting—dirty knees, bare feet, wild hair— live cricket in one hand, a hammer in the other.

    I stood frozen for a moment, taking in what was in front of me before turning on my heel and breaking into a run for the door. Something caught my arm just as I was getting to the door. It was Erin’s fist, with the strength of a medium sized gorilla, grasping my upper arm and spinning me around to face her. I looked down into her intense eyes, wide and dilated, teeth bared. She growled in my face, “DON’T TELL MOMMMMM!!!!”

  • Erin the Necromancer

    One day when Erin was about 6 or 7, several friends from the neighborhood and I were playing in my backyard. I don’t remember everyone who was there, I just remember seeing another neighborhood kid come running into the backyard yelling, “Erin has a SNAKE!!!!!”

    I looked up past the corner of the house to see my sister walking down the street towards our house, arm outstretched, something limply dangling from her bony little fingers.

    You could watch the fear roll across the yard like a tidal wave. Kids ran around in circles, eyes darting from gate to gate trying to determine:

    1. Which one Erin was going to come in, and,

    2. How they were going to escape…

    Earlier in the day we walked past a flattened foot long green snake up the road. It must have made an impression on Erin because she felt it necessary to go peel it off the hot summer pavement and bring it home.

    I, fancying myself a gymnast and acrobat, flipped myself up onto the top of the swing set where I liked to practice my parallel bars routine. Jennifer, one of the group, attempted to cross the chain link fence but the crotch of her pants became entangled on the sharp edges and she was stuck for the remainder–no matter what happened next.

    The two boys in the group, Ryan and Brian, were hiding behind furniture in our storage building. (it figures that the boys would hide while the girls attempt acrobatic feats to escape!).

    When Erin was finally stopped and questioned on what exactly she thought she was doing, her response was simple.

    “Well? It was dead!!!”

    Erin’s logic is never immediately understandable. Maybe she was explaining to mom that she wasn’t technically disturbing it since it was already dead… Who knows? Too bad there isn’t a picture of that. I’d love to see her grinning with her super long pigtails on each side of her head. Holding that snake out for display…

    The snake made a second appearance the next day when mom went out to take the trash out. She had forgotten that she had thrown it in there…