When I was 5 years old and living in Buffalo, New York, I had two friends who lived down the street from me.
Jeffrey and Diana were both my age and in kindergarten with me.
Half the year Jeffrey was the biggest pest and aggravation in the world and I hated his guts, and the other half of the year he was my boyfriend. He was rather stupid but always great fun playing cowboys and Indians.
Diana was what we call in our family rather "squirrely". She had the attention span of a gnat and was constantly getting into things. She loved going into Jeffrey's garage because for some strange reason his parents had filled it with old furniture, and she liked going through the chest of drawers, basically snooping.
One day we were all playing in Jeffrey's garage. We were trying to decide whether to play cowboys and Indians, or cops and robbers. Jeffrey and I were arguing about it while Diana snooped and investigated a armoire in the corner.
It was about that time that Jeffrey got mad at me because I insisted on playing cops and robbers and letting me be the cop. So to get back at me, he yank down the front of his shorts and showed off what God gave him.
Yes, I saw it all.
Unfortunately, as a 5-year-old little girl, I had never seen anything like that and did the worst thing possible.
I burst out laughing and told him that it looked like he had a Vienna sausage in his underwear.
That is when Jeffrey said, "So do you!"
"Nope, not me!" And that's when I pulled down the front of my shorts to show him I was not sporting a Vienna sausage.
He looked absolutely flabbergasted, but at least he shut up. So we resumed playing cops and robbers and then moved on to cowboys and Indians.
Later that afternoon, I heard my dad's famous whistle. He could whistle so shrilly that it would rattle windows throughout the neighborhood, and when we heard that whistle we knew it was time to come home or else we were going to get in trouble.
So I ran home, washed up for supper, and got ready to eat dinner with the family. That's when the phone rang.
It was Jeffrey's mom who proceeded to tell my mom that I had yanked down my shorts and upset Jeffrey by showing him my goodies.
Evidently, Jeffrey had tattled on me.
My mother was mortified. She yanked me up and demanded to know what had happened. I told her the truth, that Jeffrey was being a bully and had showed me that he had a Vienna sausage and said I had one too, and I had to prove him wrong.
I received a swift swat on my rear end and had my nose shoved into the corner.
My mother's punishment of choice was to make me stand in the corner where I spent half my life.
I actually grew rather fond of the corner and would daydream while standing there.
On this particular day I was daydreaming about how I was going to payback Jeffrey, the tattletale.
I was a bloodthirsty little thing and out for vengeance.
How dare he blame me for something He started! I was determined that I was going to hit him, or run him over with my little bicycle.
Evidently Jeffrey was rather afraid of me, because he made himself scarce for several days after that. But just as most children do, we got over it and became friends again and continued fighting and playing for several years even though he continued to be a nasty tattletale.
Although we discovered there was a strange difference between little boys and little girls, we couldn't have cared less. We lost interest in that because we discovered Batman and Dick Clark on Saturdays.
But honestly, to this day when I go through the grocery store and see a can of Vienna sausages, I automatically think of Jeffrey.
And now, you will too.
