When I was really little, like around four years old, the doors to my brother’s bedrooms suddenly had little locks on them one day.  I remember hovering around the door as the hook and eye lock was installed, wondering why on earth my brothers would need such a thing?  Was I going to get one too?  I was told that the problem was me, I was going into my brother’s rooms uninvited, apparently, without their permission.  I remember being hurt and indignant.  When had I, Tamara Suzanne Hansen, EVER gone into their rooms uninvited?  Never!  That’s when!  I never even sneaked into their rooms when they were gone to steal Halloween candy!  NEVER!  If anything, my brothers were the problem, not me.  The were the ones barging in on me.  (Maybe, just perhaps, I have one foggy memory of one incident in my brother Dan’s room with his Halloween candy and some very disappointing Red Hots, but perhaps that was a dream…)  It turns out that the locks were just high enough that my four year old self couldn’t reach it unless I were to drag a chair to my brother’s rooms, but that would have been really just too too conspicuous.  I really don’t remember being that much of a problem though, and the act of putting those locks on my brother’s doors and not a lock on my door has left me feeling stung for over 30 years now…

Flash forward to present day in the LJ house.

Jude is obsessed with Gigi’s room.  The moment her door opens, he drops everything and hustles to it as quickly as his chubby little thighs will allow.  Upon entry, he runs here and there, tossing this, dumping that, and this sister who is working so hard of keeping her room clean is left with a huge mess that was not made by her.  We thought his fascination would wear off, and so over Christmas Break, asked Gigi to leave her door open a little more, to allow him a bit more access to he could get over it.  He didn’t.  He tried to move in.  He began trying to sleep in her bunk bed, dragging his toy bins into her room, and started staking out territory.  He managed to break her computer (both by shoving stuff in the disk drive and adding water to the machine) and also busted her Nintendo DS.  We closed the door a little more often to keep him out.  He learned to work the doorknob!  Poor Gigi never had a break, there was Jude, in her room, whether or not she was there.  It is to the point that, yes, we put a child ‘safety’ doorknob cover on Gigi’s door so he can no longer get into her room unaided.  He pounds longingly on her door now, hollering her name and drags any adult over and places their hand on the knob in hopes that he will gain access.  It is so sad to watch him deal with the emotions that come from being excluded from his favorite place and his favorite girl.  And I totally get his feelings because that was me about 32 years ago.

It seems that my brothers and parents had a good point.  Perhaps after four years of having a little sister around had been enough.  And for Dan, make it six with a little brother AND a little sister who were constantly fascinated with his things and his room.  It took many many years for me to finally justify my parent’s actions in supporting my brothers, but I finally get it.  I always thought that little brothers and sisters got a bad rap, and it is probably worse that they deserve, but watching the most patient sister in the world deal with her bruiser of a brother is breaking my heart too, and it left me to do something I promised myself I’d never do: allow my older child to lock her younger brother out.  Sometimes you just need a break!  Lesson learned.

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