When I was 5 years old, I started doing dishes... every...single....day. My sister D was 7 at the time. We took over the torch from older sisters C (then 16) and S (then 14) who got to retire once we were old enough to stand on a kitchen chair to put dishes away. We weren't allowed to wash the sharp knives until we were older, but we did everything else including dirty ashtrays, fish scalers and poopy chicken eggs after the dinner dishes were finished. Yuck, yuck and yuck. It ran the gamot!
I laugh, because though I'm in my 30s, sometimes I feel like the stories should be from either 60 year old or an Amish person (except the dirty ashtrays). HA. Growing up sometimes we felt like "the only kid that never got to...", but now it's kind of fun to look back on such a great childhood.
Tonight I dried some dishes and thought of my sisters and the BRUTAL wet towel snap fights we used to have after doing dishes. We nearly drew blood, as the towels we used were old soft diapers and could really zing when they were damp. Mom had to break up the festivities on several occasions. We learned from the best, our dad, who could snap with the best of 'em! And on the evenings we were mad at each other for tattling, hogging the phone or borrowing clothes without asking, we could reallly rip each other!
I felt a little sad to think most kids today won't ever get to have dish towel fights after dinner (since some barely load a dishwasher, let alone hand dry). Guess we'll have to teach ours anyway... but maybe she can be a little older than 5!
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