I’ve done a lot. Laughed a lot. Cried a lot. Seen a lot. Known a lot. These are my stories of a lot.

This story is one that I’m often asked to retell. I don’t know if it’s because it’s so wacky or if it’s because I typically can’t stop laughing while I tell it. And it wasn’t until I was very grown, that my mom found out about the time I dropped my little sister, Dani, from our balcony.

It was the summer. Our mom was at work and we were bored. My sister had to be about 6 years old so that would’ve made me 11. I’ll stop here because I know some righteous parents are gasping right now. No worries, we were fine. Typically I was a very responsible 11 year old child. This just wasn’t one of those times.

As we were playing on our second story balcony, one of our Barbies fell off. I am 100% positive it was Dani’s fault.

“How are we gonna get Barbie?” she asked.

I looked down at the ground and back at Dani. We couldn’t just leave Barbie down there. And Mom’s #1 rule was to NEVER LEAVE THE APARTMENT. So, the genius that I am, I came up with an idea. “I know!”

We rushed to the closet and grabbed two blankets. The plan? Tie them together and hang them over the edge.

“You climb down,” I instructed. “Throw Barbie back up and then climb up.”

Honestly, that couldn’t have been any better of an idea.

You see, Dani was small. That meant, I was strong enough to hold the blankets while she climbed down and she was mighty enough to climb back up.

Well, she made it down just fine. She threw Barbie back up just fine. The coming back up part was where we ran into trouble. Dani got about halfway up and lost all endurance.

“Help! I can’t make it, Cori.” Beads of sweat dotted her forehead and her jaw clinched.

I also, was tired of holding the blanket and didn’t know how much longer I could hang on if she didn’t make it up soon. “Keep trying, you’re almost here.”

A rush of breath expelled as I tried to pull her up. Together, we got her another half inch higher but she still had about 6 inches to go until she reached me.

Things weren’t looking good for this adventure or Dani’s butt.

Her fingers gripped the blanket. “Give me your hand,” she huffed.

I agreed because, in theory, this should’ve worked. But Mom used to say I was full of book smarts and lacked common sense.

This is where things went awry. In order to reach her, I let go of the blanket. Do you hear me??? I. LET. GO. And Dani went tumbling.

Her face showed pure fear and my face, well, pure alarm. Although she was about to die, I was going to die too when our mom got home.

Dani’s arms and feet flailed but somehow she never let go of that blanket. Then, I reached out like I could actually catch her.

She hit the ground and she didn’t move. I froze. Had I killed my little sister, again? Finally she cried, “My butt!!”

I ran right out the front door, breaking Mom’s rule, as if it mattered at that point. Dani could barely walk so I sat her in Mom’s trusty old brown recliner on top of a heating pad. Because if anything could cure something, it was that recliner and the heating pad.

I had to cater to Dani for about a week so she wouldn’t rat me out but as I reminded her, “Tattle-telling will get us both in trouble.”

When Mom got home, she eyed us both but never called us out. Thank goodness we lived to see another day. Here’s proof of us still living.