There is a unique bond between siblings that can’t really be explained. In short, siblings know more about each other than a respective spouse might. Siblings have survived it at all. The long car rides to vacation, the fighting, the bickering, the jealousy, hating each other, but we’ve also loved each other, been fiercely loyal to each other, and have shared experiences no one else will ever understand. Thick or thin, siblings look out for each other. As the oldest, I know. People have tried to harm a hair on my sister’s head and the end result was never pretty for them. I may not have always liked my sister, but I was the only one who could beat up on that girl! Ditto for my brother.
Over the years, we’ve collected a number of stories.
There was the grape fight with the Moore’s. My sister and I had a blast at the ages of around five and three when we got the great idea to pick our neighbor’s grapes and throw them at the neighbor boys. The end result was a pissed off neighbor who had no grapes to make wine and a back patio stained from the grapes. We were in trouble.
Somehow, it seems that when siblings are getting along, the end result is not going to be pretty.
Enter the Big Leg Drop.
This incident is so vivid in the HK’s minds, that these simple words throw us into fits of laughter. Try it. Come up to one of us and “say Big. Leg. Drop,” and see the reaction. Recognition is immediate and that night comes back to us in a snap. I don’t ever think this night will be erased from our memories.
It was Christmas Eve.
Let’s back it up just a moment.
Since we were little and believed in Santa Claus (Maybe I still believe in Santa Claus), we’ve routinely slept in the same bed together. This mainly started when Andrea and I shared a room, but it’s kept going over the years. And when Kevin was old enough, we’d build a pallet on the floor of the room Andrea and I shared and we’d all three sleep down there on the pallet. Sounds like nice, loving children, right? Wrong. We were scared to death someone else would wake up and get to their treasure trove of goodies first.
As we got older, we didn’t abandon this ritual. In fact, it was just recently given up. The biggest factor for this was that instead of waking our mother up, she was now doing the waking. And everyone can get better sleep in their own beds. There’s always a battle to not be stuck in the middle.
Now, to the meat of the story.
We were in the Springhaven House, so our respective ages were: Erin 15, Andrea 13, and Kevin 10. This is the absolute youngest we could’ve been because we’d moved in that house and then Andrea relocated to the basement a couple of years later.
No matter what we thought or believed, none of us were ever able to get to sleep. We were your stereotypical middle-class children and thusly spoiled so. Never too spoiled though. Mom made sure to deny me my fair share of My Little Ponies when I was little. But Christmas was the one time we would get properly spoiled
We’re all keyed up and laying in Kevin’s bed. When we moved, we all got out own bedrooms with our own bedroom furniture. Andrea and I had twin beds. Kevin was lucky and got a full size. Yes, the three of us were a little cramped in this bed. It didn’t matter though because we were laughing and having fun.
We’d always had a big WWF/WCW fetish from the time we were children. Of course, during the reign of Ric Flair, we cut back, but with Stone Cold and Goldberg, we were watching again. Somehow Andrea and Kevin began performing wrestling moves on the bed.
He did an elbow drop.
We all laughed.
Andrea stood up and said “Big leg drop,” and proceeded to jump and fall on her butt near the bottom corner of Kevin’s bed.
Andrea landed.
As soon as she landed, a loud cracking sound was heard followed by a crash as Andrea tumbled off the bed and landed on the floor.
“What’s going on back there!” my mom hollered and proceeded to thunder down the hallway.
I moved with the speed and precision of an accomplished older sibling. Don’t ask me how I did what I did, how I knew to use what I used…I can’t even answer that question to this day. All I knew was that mom was thundering down the hallway, dad probably wouldn’t be far behind and I didn’t want to be grounded.
I spotted a hockey stick on the other side of the room. I made a leap for the hockey stick, leaped back to the bed, hoisted the mattress and shoved the hockey stick under the bed. I had assumed she had broken a mattress slat. What she did was much worse. Fortunately, the hockey stick took care of that.
Seconds later, mom opened the door. Andrea, Kevin, and I were all nestled together in the bed, our faces frozen in that quizzical look that clearly relays something was something was going.
Mom peered into the room. “What was that noise?”
“What noise?” we all three asked and yes, it was pretty much in unison.
“There were a couple of loud crashes.”
“Nope, we didn’t hear anything.”
She looked at us disbelievingly and then cast her eyes around the room suspiciously, looking for the broken object or objects. Finally satisfied, she closed the door and laughed.
A collective sigh was heard in the room. We were amazed we had gotten away with it. After we got over our initial feelings of relief, the hilarity of the situation settled over us. For years we would laugh about this night, and for years my parents would never know the truth of that night.
Several times over the years, we would all have a sibling wrestling squabble in which Kevin would inevitably say “No big leg drops.”
Still, our parents never knew what was so funny. They didn’t really have any suspicions either. There are multitude of words, sayings, lines that cause us to erupt into a fit of giggles. This annoys my mother to this day. Probably because if I call her and I find out that she is with Andrea, I’ll ask her to say something random, something that makes no sense to her, but makes plenty of sense of Andrea who’ll crack up and then give the proper response. It’s our own little HK Language
Eventually though, the Big Leg Drop was found out.
About ten years later, in the summer of 2005 our house went on the market. An after effect of divorce (Thanks, dad, it’s not like we three loved that house or anything). Sometimes I wonder if things would’ve turned out differently (like maybe the Big Leg Drop would still be a mystery) if my parents were still together.
We had a big rummage sale and mom sold all of our bedroom furniture. It was a little dated and young. I had two bedroom suits anyway, one that needed to come home from my college apartment, Kevin took my parent’s bedroom furniture and Andrea opted for something new.
It was in the preparation for this rummage sale that the true story of Christmas Eve many years ago unfolded.
Mom was in Kevin’s room putting everything to right. She was messing with his bed. The next thing we all knew, we were being summoned.
We entered Kevin’s room and she held up The Hockey Stick.
“What is this?” she asked.
“A hockey stick,” I ventured.
“Why was it under Kevin’s bed?”
We all three kind of looked around and then before anyone could say anything more, we burst out laughing. She tried to get us to stop, tried to get the story out of us, but it was no use. Sure, our ruse was up, but it lasted nearly a decade before any parent caught on. That was outside of the statute of limitations. We could not be punished for our crime.
“It was kind of holding it up,” we said.
She stared at us in awe. “Well, I can’t sell Kevin’s bed now. The frame is all twisted and I find out a hockey stick is holding it up. When did this happen, Kevin?”
We asked her if she remembered the Christmas Eve when she heard the crashes. She did. We came clean and told her were the result of the Big Leg Drop.
“But the frame,” she said. It might be believable for some people to twist a frame, but considering that Andrea was barely 85 pounds, it was a valid question.
“It wasn’t just any leg drop,” Kevin said. “It was a Big Leg Drop. She jumped up and then landed on her butt.”
And then we all three started laughing again despite mom’s dropped jaw.
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