It is time for me to get this off my chest. For a long time, I have struggled with the decision of venting about this life changing ordeal. Today is the day I finally express my anger over something that has irked me for a long time. Please don’t be mad at me. You should have seen this coming.

I have been blessed with having a large family. Such a large family brought a hodge podge of opportunities to the table. Like every family, we fought. We fought a lot. At least with so many kids in the family, there was so few times that it was all against one. We teamed up and would pick fights with each others. Fun times. Now that we are older, the fighting is over. No more pouring milk on the other’s head (thanks Erin), no more getting handcuffed to a piano, and no more getting coxed into smelling a dogs ace after losing a game of Jenga. Like I said, we had some pretty wild adventures.

But I am still fuming over an incident that occurred over 15 years ago. I still cannot forgive her for doing this to me. I don’t think I ever will. She broke my heart and since that day, a little black rain cloud hover over me. I am reminded of it each time I watch Pirate of the Caribbean. She will never be forgiven for the crime she thought of only as, ‘harmless’. Harmless my ace!

I should explain the story. Before I got suckered into working my real job, I had a job that every kid had when they were younger. No. I am not talking about being a paperboy. I did have that job in some degree. My brother would talk us into helping him. Did we ever get anything for it? Nope. Even my oldest brother finally paid his dues for having my sister and myself clean his car. With interest I might add. We banked on that one! The job I am referring to is running a lemonade stand. It was a magical and money making business. We had signs. We flagged down cars. We were young. Being young and being cute, whipper-snappers, you can make money just by standing there. Pull some Oliver Twist dialogue and they’ll empty their pockets to fill yours. We didn’t charge much. Probably a quarter or something. But a quarter is a million bucks to a kid.

We were out there day and night. While we made money, our mom was the chef behind the lemonade. She made a great cup of lemonade. When we finally closed shopped, we amassed a sum of 65+ dollars plus change. Not bad for a lemonade stand. While I am happy for the kids now a days doing the same thing, it angers me in some way. The news stations race to their home to interview them. They talk about how they are little entrepreneurs.  How much money did these kids bring in? Barely twenty bucks. How is that impressive!? We made over 60 dollars doing this. We ran a great business. We were cute, we were young, and we were eager to roll around in money a la, Demi Moore’s, “Indecent Proposal”. As the money rolled in, we thought about what we’ll buy with it. What does a pair of kids buy with money they earned themselves?

You buy Legos. You don’t buy some crappy Space set. You don’t get a town set. You go all out and get a Pirate set. Oh, it was an amazing set. The set  was called “El Dorado Fortress“. It has so many amazing features. It has a jail cell. It has a pulley to bring in the treasures they gained. There are two cannons for the wars we put them in. They even added a small, pirate row boat.  Deny it all you want but this was the greatest set they ever came out with it. Wait… They greatest set they ever came out with is the Star Wars AT-AT. That thing is pretty BA. I need to get it. I just need more money. Will it be wrong to run a lemonade stand at my age?

Our family loved the legos. We would play with them all the time. We would build whatever our little minds could come up with. We made houses, theatres, and even made an airport. It would have been a cool airport but my brother broke it into pieces. He did that a lot. After years of holding on to legos, I had to le-go of them (ha ha). It was time I put away the childish toys and moved on to adulthood. The last sets I purchased was the “Western Set”. I was determined to collect them all. I was ready to create a story from the legos I owned. But I wasn’t thinking at the time when I took the Legos to the curb to be hauled away with the rest of the trash. It was the last time I owned a lego set. Today, I don only a Lego Boba Fett keychain. He’s lost his legs, an arm, and the decal on it has rubbed off.

With the great purchase of the “El Dorado Fortress”, my sister and I dove right in. We retreated to the basement to construct the set. We didn’t stop till all 506 pieces were put together to create the second greatest Lego set ever to grace this planet. But shortly after our purchase, things went south. It was then when the love for my younger, potato loving sister dimmed. She took it upon herself to put her grubbing little hands on this masterpiece and while she tinkered with it, she lost a major piece. It was a piece, that without it made the fortress nothing more than a wee little shanty. What piece am I talking about? She lost the captain’s hat. The captain’s hat! Every captain needs his hat. Since the hat was missing, he wasn’t a captain anymore. He looked just like all the other Lego people. How did she lose it!? We didn’t even have this set for a week before we lost a part to it. Just look at the photo. That hat just screams, “I’m an effin’ bad ass.”

Without the hat, he’s no one. She ripped away his rank and made him just a low man on the totem pole. It was a devastating event in my life. You can roll your eyes and say that it’s only a piece of plastic. Try and convince me that there are far more important things that I should be grateful for. All I can reply to that is a giant, “suck one.” You don’t get it. You don’t understand how hurt I felt when this piece went missing. You don’t know how hard I cried when I couldn’t call him the captain anymore. We were forced to call him, “that guy with the missing hat.”

I love my sister but I cannot forgive her for killing a little piece of me. This is more than just a plastic hat. It was a major purchase. It was something my sister and I worked very hard for. We sold the lemonade to everyone. We accepted their brochures about finding Christ. We did whatever we would to fill our piggy bank. Each night we counted the money twice. We would talk for hours about how rich we were. We skimmed the Lego magazine. We fought over which one to buy. Once we spotted this fortress, we knew what we wanted. It wasn’t the cannons that excited us. The jail cell was cool but that didn’t put a stamp of approval on this set. It all boiled down to the hat. The hat sealed the deal. It was the deciding factor we both agreed on that made up hand over our hard earned money over to the Wal-Mart employee. Just looking at the box was orgasmic. We dreamt about all the things we would do and the stories we would create. It was going to be awesome. But once the hat went missing, the dream was dead. It was a failed attempt to try and showcase our achievement with money.

This is the first time my sister is hearing about this. I am sorry that I had to come out with my anger via the internet but it had to be done. I had to let her and everyone else know that she killed a part of me when she lost the hat. A piece of me was lost that day. I still wonder if the hat is still at the house. I wonder if it still is waiting to be found, to be reunited with the captain. But alas, that will never happen. The fortress is gone. The Lego’s are now nothing but a memory. Thank you, little sister. Thank you for ruining my life. I will never forgive you.