I also felt retarded...

I felt fat all day. This in itself is a pretty common and not very serious malady, but I was thinking about my sister and my nickname too. When we were all young, and I was a bony teen and she was a round pre/early teen, she called me twig. Cause I was twiggy. Now, I am bordering on frou-dom, and she is a cute Skipper doll.

how did twig survive the transition? At some point in our mutual youth, I started absolutely adoring her, and wanted to be called whatever she called me. It really didn't occur to me at the time that there might be other things going into the nickname.

Folly. What folly.

It's weird how these details are. Our pasts are like the rings of a tree; the events and progress of that particular summer and fall may be over grown by years and years of other things, but they are still down there under it all. The shape of each year and each layer of bark determines how the next year is to grow, and the next by that one, and so on...