Jilly BeanAs I walked into the parking lot with a bag of groceries in one hand, I rummaged around in my purse with the other. Where did I put those keys? I was considering returning to the store to see if I had accidentally left them when, upon reaching my car, I stopped short. Little puffs of grey smoke were coming out of the exhaust pipe. Quickly I tried the door. Locked. I put my face up to the window and there, hanging from the ignition were my keys. It was bad enough that I had locked them inside, but to do it while the car was running was to make a new personal record for stupidity.
I called Brandon from the payphone and he promised to save me by delivering the spare key. The only problem was that Jill still had it at our parent’s house in Ogden. Although there was still snow on the ground the sun was shining and I leaned against the car to enjoy the warmth of the spring morning. Reaching into the grocery bag I pulled out a nice big apple. At least I had a snack.
I took the first bite and looked at my car. The white Geo-Metro was nothing luxurious, but it was special to me. Jill had recently purchased a new Honda Civic and I became the proud owner of her ’96 compact car, which I was happy to have. I was used to taking her old possessions when she bought new ones. I added the car to my collection of her snowboarding gloves, stereo, and various pairs of shoes. She had always considered things ‘worn out’ much sooner than I. My thrifty personality wouldn’t allow her to throw out what I still considered good merchandise. I enjoyed these ‘hand me ups’ while knowing that I was the one that should have been handing down to her. There never really was a big sister in our relationship. We were equals. Except that she was the one with all the guts. As I thought about the spunky girl that had been a constant part of my life, memories flooded my mind.
Jill was a quiet little girl who spent much of her time alone. She worked on making origami animals and wrote little stories on note pads. Her demeanor seemed so shy, but underneath was pure stubbornness. Our aunts and uncles were surprised on her third birthday when she changed her name. No longer would she allow anyone to refer to ‘Jill.’ “My name,” she would calmly, but firmly correct, “is Jilly Bean.” The adults would laugh, as they often do at the whims of children, but she wasn’t trying to be funny. Her seriousness added to the humor. So Jilly Bean she became. She, just before kindergarten, regretted her insistence when, in an effort to become mature, she tried to return to being just Jill again. It wasn’t a habit that was easy to break. Everyone called her Jilly Bean long past the days that she wanted them to.
When I was young, I was terrified that I might accidentally do something to make the adults laugh at me that way. I was amazed at the courage which filled this little girl. She didn’t care what they thought. She wanted to be called Jilly Bean, and it didn’t matter if everyone else thought it was silly.
I remember another time when I stood in awe of her bravery. The best part of the summer happens each day as the evening approaches and the bright sun begins to relinquish its scorching attack. Jill and I would take advantage of this pocket of time to ride our bikes and enjoy the carefree wanderings of childhood. We would ride up to MarLon Hills Elementary School, which was just up the road from our house, and play on the jungle gym. When I look back on one day in particular, when I was nine and she was seven, I can still feel the peace and freedom that a safe neighborhood provided. I can also feel the terror that keeping up with Jill provoked. Instead of just playing on the monkey bars, Jill had another idea.
She pointed to the Big Hill. We all called it the Big Hill because it was way too steep for any type of fun. My eyes followed the direction of her finger.
“What?” I hadn’t yet grasped her vision.
She looked down at her bike and in an excited whisper said, “Let’s do it.”
“On our bikes? Are you kidding?” She was nuts. When I looked into her face I knew that she wasn’t kidding and had already made up her mind to ride down the hill. I knew I couldn’t abandon her in this wild pursuit. I took a deep breath. “All right. It doesn’t look so bad,” I lied, secretly hoping that when we got to the top she would chicken out.
The Big Hill was so steep that the two of us had to walk, pushing our bikes to make it to the top. Panting, I dropped my bike and sat down. I was in no hurry. The incline looked foreboding from the bottom, but from the top, it was more like suicide.
“This is going to be great!” she said. I wasn’t so sure. She looked into my face and I knew she could see the terror that was taking over my physical faculties. My hands started to shake and my stomach felt like it suddenly had turned to solid rock.
“Do you want me to go first?” she asked without fear.
NO!! I wanted to shout. Are you crazy? Sometimes it made me mad that she was so brave because always got me into these kinds of situations.
Without waiting for an answer, she jumped onto her bike and was halfway down the treacherous drop before I could even stand up. In that moment my heart stopped. Everything stopped, except the tires of her little worn out bike which were spinning so insanely fast that I could almost see smoke coming off of them. I thought that in any second the bike would become airborne. The speed in and of itself was enough to send my sister through the various layers of the atmosphere into outer space. How could I have let her take this risk? I should have protected her.
My worry was in vain. By the time I knew what was happening Jill was already at the bottom of the hill. Her brakes skidded over the black-top finish line and she started to slow down.
Du-Dum! I actually felt the second that my heart resumed its beat. I was so relieved. She turned her bike around and waved.
“Your turn.”
Suddenly my fear was re-ignited with a different type of flame. Now I returned to the sharp drop-off that my timid soul was facing. She had survived. I probably would too. Just go! Don’t think about it. The debate began in my head. I knew that if I tried to come to a practical resolution I would end up walking my bike down to the bottom instead of achieving the triumphant display of heroism that Jill had. I can’t be out-done by my little sister.
I had no choice. In one burst of peer-pressured adrenaline I hurled my bike onto the pavement. The front wheel had already started down, and as the back wheel gained speed, I was breathless. The air whipped at my ears and my eyes filled with water. The speed was magnificent. I was flying. In only a few seconds I slowed down and took my place on the hero’s podium next to Jill.
“That was AWESOME!” I yelled.
“Let’s do it again.” She answered.
I hesitated.
She frowned.
“Okay,” I said, so that she would smile again.
We did it again and again. I never got over the fear…or the desire to keep up with my sister.
She was always the courageous one.
She was my best friend.
“Do you need some help?” an elderly woman with a shopping cart broke my reverie. She had deduced my plight and was looking sympathetic.
“My husband is on his way. Thank you,” I smiled. It was surprising that she had even dared to speak to me because of my appearance. I had gone to the store straight after working out at the gym. My face was red, my hair was sticking out of the ponytail in weird directions, and my clothes were streaked with sweat marks. As I looked at my reflection in the windshield I had to laugh. I wondered if the car had objections to being owned by such a sloppy-looking driver. It probably missed Jill, who could not have been caught with a hair out of line. I pulled my eyebrows up in a surprised expression and watched the wrinkles form on my forehead. I could almost see her image there next to me. We had stood next to each other and compared faces before.
There we were as we had been so many times before, standing side by side closely comparing our faces in the mirror.
“Your forehead is bigger, and your nose is smaller,” I said.
“Our noses are the same size; they’re both big,” she argued.
I could never explain how the two of us could look so similar and so different at the same time. Strangers often recognized that we were sisters, but on close examination, there was really little similarity between our features. We both had blue eyes, but hers were a bright sky color, where mine were dark and had a grey tint. She had high cheekbones that were defined when she smiled and a small mouth with straight teeth. My cheeks were chubby and my mouth was longer. I was shorter and pudgier. If it were possible to take my body and stretch it a few inches, it might end up looking like hers. Her perfect figure was tall and thin. Her forehead was large and mine was small and wrinkled. We didn’t look anything alike…but we did. She was right. It must have been the nose.
When she was four and I was seven it was much easier to see our similarities. Our childish faces looked alike and since Mom had let us choose our attire for ourselves we wore the same styles of mismatched clothes. Fortunately during the 80s that kind of thing worked. At that time we were both blondes although to different degrees. My hair was dirty blonde, long, and stringy. Hers was completely white and always short due to her several attempts at cutting it herself which resulted in emergency trips to the hairdresser. We were different that way, even as kids. I was content with my hair in pigtails or braids and didn’t preoccupy myself with how it looked. Jill, however, wanted to take her style into her own hands, which eventually paid off.
I remember how shocking it was when I realized that my little sister had turned beautiful. She had always been a cute little girl, but with her short hair and freckles she seemed so young. Then, when I wasn’t even looking she grew up. It was like one of those T.V. makeovers, but happened more gradually. Jill’s interest in hair spanned into adolescence and soon she was creating new styles and experimenting with makeup and clothes. Although she was only fifteen, her tall, thin frame made her look like a model. We had always looked so much alike that some people thought we were twins, but now Jill had emerged from puberty far ahead of the beauty standard I kept.
I was delighted. She wasn’t only prettier than I was, she was prettier than almost every girl at Bonneville High School. If she hadn’t been my sister, I might have been annoyed but because she was, I was proud. She was proud of me too, “You are way cuter than I am,” she would say to me and I knew that she really believed it. That’s why I always knew that we had a true friendship. We saw the best in each other. I think that is also why we had so much fun.
Many of our fun times happened while playing games. When we were really young we had developed an almost nightly ritual of meeting in her bedroom for about an hour of cards. We started with Uno, which kept us entertained for a couple of months. It wasn’t enough for us to play by the regular children’s rules. She was seven and I was nine so we physically fit the description of “kids” but we both knew that in our gaming skills, we were adults. To make the game more advanced we gradually developed our own set of new rules. Contrary to many children that are trying to develop a new game, Jill and I didn’t argue. Once a rule was called, it became gospel and we stuck with it. By the end of our Uno days, despite the colorful numbered cards, draw twos and wilds, there was nothing left of the original rules. Our complicated strategies were so advanced that when Matt, our older brother asked to play, he could not keep up.
“You’re playing it wrong.”
Jill and I just looked at each other. We knew that we were, but we liked our way better.
Pretty soon our Uno game got so complicated that it was impossible to play. We tried playing Sorry, Trouble, and other board games, but nothing had the intensity to keep our interest.
Then came the day that Grandma Ike taught us the best game in the world, Strip Jack Naked. Who would have ever thought that such a good woman would even know a game with such a vulgar name? But she did, and she taught it to her granddaughters.
The game, I would later learn from the kids at school, is popular and better-known by the equally unpleasant name of Egyptian Rat Screw or E.R.S for short. In fact, in the long history I have of playing this game, Jill, Grandma Ike, and I seem to be the only ones that have ever heard of the name Strip Jack Naked. Grandma is no longer around, but Jill and I reverently use the name she passed down to us. The game was perfect for us because it was quick.
The hard part about playing games with my sister is that she is so competitive. Every time we got a new game she would play until she had the winning record, or high score. It happened first with Tetris. She started out by setting the bar with a high score. She announced her accomplishment to me and presented an immediate challenge for me to beat it, which I promptly did. The next thing I knew, she had outdone me again. I had no choice but to return the favor. Back and forth we went. Sometimes it would take an entire week for me to beat her score, but I always managed to do it. Then, one fateful day, Jill reached a score that was a large margin higher than the previous. It was completely unbeatable. I spent two months trying daily to pass her up, to no avail. The score was so high that she couldn’t even get close to it again. That was the end. Since that day, neither of us has played Tetris again. The same thing happened with a computer maze game called Lady Bugs, with Pac Man, Mrs. Pac Man, and Dr. Mario. The games were all killed by Jill’s records. I am proud that in most cases, my name is second on the list…but I do think it is a little unfair that she beats me at everything. I’m not sure if it is because she is better at games, or just more determined.
That is why Strip Jack Naked is such a great game. The two of us played and played until we became sort of professionals. There is no Olympic Gold for the fastest player, but if there was, I have no doubt it would go to one of the two of us. The best part about it was that most of the time I would win. She was always close behind, but somehow through some miraculous exchange of cards, I would come out as victor. Sometimes we still play this game, even though we are now both adults. No matter how many players start out with us, in the end it always goes back to sister against sister. On those sweet moments when I take the victory, she smiles bigger than I do. She was always proud of me and I knew it. I can understand how she feels because I’m proud of her too.
I was expecting to see Brandon on his way to save me, but instead it was Jill turning the corner into the parking lot. I was saved.
She laughed when she saw how pitiful I looked, and I felt happy inside. She’s still my best friend.
I called Brandon from the payphone and he promised to save me by delivering the spare key. The only problem was that Jill still had it at our parent’s house in Ogden. Although there was still snow on the ground the sun was shining and I leaned against the car to enjoy the warmth of the spring morning. Reaching into the grocery bag I pulled out a nice big apple. At least I had a snack.
I took the first bite and looked at my car. The white Geo-Metro was nothing luxurious, but it was special to me. Jill had recently purchased a new Honda Civic and I became the proud owner of her ’96 compact car, which I was happy to have. I was used to taking her old possessions when she bought new ones. I added the car to my collection of her snowboarding gloves, stereo, and various pairs of shoes. She had always considered things ‘worn out’ much sooner than I. My thrifty personality wouldn’t allow her to throw out what I still considered good merchandise. I enjoyed these ‘hand me ups’ while knowing that I was the one that should have been handing down to her. There never really was a big sister in our relationship. We were equals. Except that she was the one with all the guts. As I thought about the spunky girl that had been a constant part of my life, memories flooded my mind.
Jill was a quiet little girl who spent much of her time alone. She worked on making origami animals and wrote little stories on note pads. Her demeanor seemed so shy, but underneath was pure stubbornness. Our aunts and uncles were surprised on her third birthday when she changed her name. No longer would she allow anyone to refer to ‘Jill.’ “My name,” she would calmly, but firmly correct, “is Jilly Bean.” The adults would laugh, as they often do at the whims of children, but she wasn’t trying to be funny. Her seriousness added to the humor. So Jilly Bean she became. She, just before kindergarten, regretted her insistence when, in an effort to become mature, she tried to return to being just Jill again. It wasn’t a habit that was easy to break. Everyone called her Jilly Bean long past the days that she wanted them to.
When I was young, I was terrified that I might accidentally do something to make the adults laugh at me that way. I was amazed at the courage which filled this little girl. She didn’t care what they thought. She wanted to be called Jilly Bean, and it didn’t matter if everyone else thought it was silly.
I remember another time when I stood in awe of her bravery. The best part of the summer happens each day as the evening approaches and the bright sun begins to relinquish its scorching attack. Jill and I would take advantage of this pocket of time to ride our bikes and enjoy the carefree wanderings of childhood. We would ride up to MarLon Hills Elementary School, which was just up the road from our house, and play on the jungle gym. When I look back on one day in particular, when I was nine and she was seven, I can still feel the peace and freedom that a safe neighborhood provided. I can also feel the terror that keeping up with Jill provoked. Instead of just playing on the monkey bars, Jill had another idea.
She pointed to the Big Hill. We all called it the Big Hill because it was way too steep for any type of fun. My eyes followed the direction of her finger.
“What?” I hadn’t yet grasped her vision.
She looked down at her bike and in an excited whisper said, “Let’s do it.”
“On our bikes? Are you kidding?” She was nuts. When I looked into her face I knew that she wasn’t kidding and had already made up her mind to ride down the hill. I knew I couldn’t abandon her in this wild pursuit. I took a deep breath. “All right. It doesn’t look so bad,” I lied, secretly hoping that when we got to the top she would chicken out.
The Big Hill was so steep that the two of us had to walk, pushing our bikes to make it to the top. Panting, I dropped my bike and sat down. I was in no hurry. The incline looked foreboding from the bottom, but from the top, it was more like suicide.
“This is going to be great!” she said. I wasn’t so sure. She looked into my face and I knew she could see the terror that was taking over my physical faculties. My hands started to shake and my stomach felt like it suddenly had turned to solid rock.
“Do you want me to go first?” she asked without fear.
NO!! I wanted to shout. Are you crazy? Sometimes it made me mad that she was so brave because always got me into these kinds of situations.
Without waiting for an answer, she jumped onto her bike and was halfway down the treacherous drop before I could even stand up. In that moment my heart stopped. Everything stopped, except the tires of her little worn out bike which were spinning so insanely fast that I could almost see smoke coming off of them. I thought that in any second the bike would become airborne. The speed in and of itself was enough to send my sister through the various layers of the atmosphere into outer space. How could I have let her take this risk? I should have protected her.
My worry was in vain. By the time I knew what was happening Jill was already at the bottom of the hill. Her brakes skidded over the black-top finish line and she started to slow down.
Du-Dum! I actually felt the second that my heart resumed its beat. I was so relieved. She turned her bike around and waved.
“Your turn.”
Suddenly my fear was re-ignited with a different type of flame. Now I returned to the sharp drop-off that my timid soul was facing. She had survived. I probably would too. Just go! Don’t think about it. The debate began in my head. I knew that if I tried to come to a practical resolution I would end up walking my bike down to the bottom instead of achieving the triumphant display of heroism that Jill had. I can’t be out-done by my little sister.
I had no choice. In one burst of peer-pressured adrenaline I hurled my bike onto the pavement. The front wheel had already started down, and as the back wheel gained speed, I was breathless. The air whipped at my ears and my eyes filled with water. The speed was magnificent. I was flying. In only a few seconds I slowed down and took my place on the hero’s podium next to Jill.
“That was AWESOME!” I yelled.
“Let’s do it again.” She answered.
I hesitated.
She frowned.
“Okay,” I said, so that she would smile again.
We did it again and again. I never got over the fear…or the desire to keep up with my sister.
She was always the courageous one.
She was my best friend.
“Do you need some help?” an elderly woman with a shopping cart broke my reverie. She had deduced my plight and was looking sympathetic.
“My husband is on his way. Thank you,” I smiled. It was surprising that she had even dared to speak to me because of my appearance. I had gone to the store straight after working out at the gym. My face was red, my hair was sticking out of the ponytail in weird directions, and my clothes were streaked with sweat marks. As I looked at my reflection in the windshield I had to laugh. I wondered if the car had objections to being owned by such a sloppy-looking driver. It probably missed Jill, who could not have been caught with a hair out of line. I pulled my eyebrows up in a surprised expression and watched the wrinkles form on my forehead. I could almost see her image there next to me. We had stood next to each other and compared faces before.
There we were as we had been so many times before, standing side by side closely comparing our faces in the mirror.
“Your forehead is bigger, and your nose is smaller,” I said.
“Our noses are the same size; they’re both big,” she argued.
I could never explain how the two of us could look so similar and so different at the same time. Strangers often recognized that we were sisters, but on close examination, there was really little similarity between our features. We both had blue eyes, but hers were a bright sky color, where mine were dark and had a grey tint. She had high cheekbones that were defined when she smiled and a small mouth with straight teeth. My cheeks were chubby and my mouth was longer. I was shorter and pudgier. If it were possible to take my body and stretch it a few inches, it might end up looking like hers. Her perfect figure was tall and thin. Her forehead was large and mine was small and wrinkled. We didn’t look anything alike…but we did. She was right. It must have been the nose.
When she was four and I was seven it was much easier to see our similarities. Our childish faces looked alike and since Mom had let us choose our attire for ourselves we wore the same styles of mismatched clothes. Fortunately during the 80s that kind of thing worked. At that time we were both blondes although to different degrees. My hair was dirty blonde, long, and stringy. Hers was completely white and always short due to her several attempts at cutting it herself which resulted in emergency trips to the hairdresser. We were different that way, even as kids. I was content with my hair in pigtails or braids and didn’t preoccupy myself with how it looked. Jill, however, wanted to take her style into her own hands, which eventually paid off.
I remember how shocking it was when I realized that my little sister had turned beautiful. She had always been a cute little girl, but with her short hair and freckles she seemed so young. Then, when I wasn’t even looking she grew up. It was like one of those T.V. makeovers, but happened more gradually. Jill’s interest in hair spanned into adolescence and soon she was creating new styles and experimenting with makeup and clothes. Although she was only fifteen, her tall, thin frame made her look like a model. We had always looked so much alike that some people thought we were twins, but now Jill had emerged from puberty far ahead of the beauty standard I kept.
I was delighted. She wasn’t only prettier than I was, she was prettier than almost every girl at Bonneville High School. If she hadn’t been my sister, I might have been annoyed but because she was, I was proud. She was proud of me too, “You are way cuter than I am,” she would say to me and I knew that she really believed it. That’s why I always knew that we had a true friendship. We saw the best in each other. I think that is also why we had so much fun.
Many of our fun times happened while playing games. When we were really young we had developed an almost nightly ritual of meeting in her bedroom for about an hour of cards. We started with Uno, which kept us entertained for a couple of months. It wasn’t enough for us to play by the regular children’s rules. She was seven and I was nine so we physically fit the description of “kids” but we both knew that in our gaming skills, we were adults. To make the game more advanced we gradually developed our own set of new rules. Contrary to many children that are trying to develop a new game, Jill and I didn’t argue. Once a rule was called, it became gospel and we stuck with it. By the end of our Uno days, despite the colorful numbered cards, draw twos and wilds, there was nothing left of the original rules. Our complicated strategies were so advanced that when Matt, our older brother asked to play, he could not keep up.
“You’re playing it wrong.”
Jill and I just looked at each other. We knew that we were, but we liked our way better.
Pretty soon our Uno game got so complicated that it was impossible to play. We tried playing Sorry, Trouble, and other board games, but nothing had the intensity to keep our interest.
Then came the day that Grandma Ike taught us the best game in the world, Strip Jack Naked. Who would have ever thought that such a good woman would even know a game with such a vulgar name? But she did, and she taught it to her granddaughters.
The game, I would later learn from the kids at school, is popular and better-known by the equally unpleasant name of Egyptian Rat Screw or E.R.S for short. In fact, in the long history I have of playing this game, Jill, Grandma Ike, and I seem to be the only ones that have ever heard of the name Strip Jack Naked. Grandma is no longer around, but Jill and I reverently use the name she passed down to us. The game was perfect for us because it was quick.
The hard part about playing games with my sister is that she is so competitive. Every time we got a new game she would play until she had the winning record, or high score. It happened first with Tetris. She started out by setting the bar with a high score. She announced her accomplishment to me and presented an immediate challenge for me to beat it, which I promptly did. The next thing I knew, she had outdone me again. I had no choice but to return the favor. Back and forth we went. Sometimes it would take an entire week for me to beat her score, but I always managed to do it. Then, one fateful day, Jill reached a score that was a large margin higher than the previous. It was completely unbeatable. I spent two months trying daily to pass her up, to no avail. The score was so high that she couldn’t even get close to it again. That was the end. Since that day, neither of us has played Tetris again. The same thing happened with a computer maze game called Lady Bugs, with Pac Man, Mrs. Pac Man, and Dr. Mario. The games were all killed by Jill’s records. I am proud that in most cases, my name is second on the list…but I do think it is a little unfair that she beats me at everything. I’m not sure if it is because she is better at games, or just more determined.
That is why Strip Jack Naked is such a great game. The two of us played and played until we became sort of professionals. There is no Olympic Gold for the fastest player, but if there was, I have no doubt it would go to one of the two of us. The best part about it was that most of the time I would win. She was always close behind, but somehow through some miraculous exchange of cards, I would come out as victor. Sometimes we still play this game, even though we are now both adults. No matter how many players start out with us, in the end it always goes back to sister against sister. On those sweet moments when I take the victory, she smiles bigger than I do. She was always proud of me and I knew it. I can understand how she feels because I’m proud of her too.
I was expecting to see Brandon on his way to save me, but instead it was Jill turning the corner into the parking lot. I was saved.
She laughed when she saw how pitiful I looked, and I felt happy inside. She’s still my best friend.
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