“Being able to make my sister happy by making her laugh and smile, despite all that was going on around us at the time, was one of the greatest feelings. It brought a smile to my face knowing that she was happy in that moment.”
When Jessica was in the third grade, her teacher handed out stickers to the students who did well on their homework. Once a student had enough stickers, they were allowed to pick out a prize. But, one had to choose carefully.
She would set up these small prizes on a table and say, ‘Pick whatever you like. But remember, just one. And if you touch it, you keep it.’ I remember I would be so excited to get something new but also feel anxious because this was a big decision for a third grader. If I touched it, it meant I had to take it and I couldn’t pick something else. So I always made sure not to touch something before being completely sure that was the prize I wanted.
One day Jessica had enough stickers for a prize, on display here.
I saw this purple fish keychain that I just couldn’t take my eyes off of. I would look at the other prizes on the table, but my eyes would come back to this purple fish keychain.
While she got the keychain at school, Jessica’s memories of this trinket of youthful accomplishment are wrapped up in her home life, and particularly the relationship she had with her little sister.
I have memories of me and my sister lying on the ground at night. My sister had trouble sleeping alone. On the ground we were able to lie next to each other while I told her bedtime stories that I would make up, mostly about romance, and tragedy.
After the story was complete, Jessica had a routine of singing a song to her sister, and then using the fish keychain as part of a comedy act.
Once I was done I would take out the keychain and start to sing Five Little Speckled Frogs. Once I got to the end of my song my sister would be ready to laugh because she knew what was coming next and it was her favorite part. I would say, ‘Where did it go?’ while moving the fish to the right and then looking left, and then moving the fish to my left and looking right. After that the fish would give her kisses.
She would laugh so hard when I did this that it would wake up my parents and we would get in trouble because it was late and we had to be asleep already.
Reflecting back, Jessica suspects that the juxtaposition of telling sad stories with a silly performance was meant to help protect her sister from their parents’ frequent arguing.
I feel like I did this to show her that even if things don’t end happily, there is always something else to distract you, or to make you forget and smile.
The pair continue to share a close bond today.
Me and my sister have always been close. To this day we are close and we tell each other everything. The same way that I don’t like to see her hurt, she doesn’t like to see me hurt. With this keychain, I would make her smile and laugh, and that was something I felt happy to do. I keep the keychain in a box today. Every single time I take it out my sister always says, ‘Aww! Remember when you would sing to me and tell me stories! What’s that song again?”
Five green speckled frogs sat on a speckled log, eating the most delicious bugs. Yum! Yum! One jumped into the pool, where it was nice and cool. Now there are four green speckled frogs ...