Sharing Rooms

~Elizabeth~

When we were young, Jennifer and I shared a large room. We each had a twin bed on opposite sides of the room, with a nightstand in between us. Of course, I made her sleep closest to the door - that way when a burgler came in, he would take her first.

Oh the fun we'd have in that room - jumping from bed to bed (the neighbors said it looked as if we were flying), begging Dad to tell us stories and let us leave the radio on until we fell asleep, building "spider webs" from balls of yarn to climb through, and of course, sticker trading for fake money (Mom's favorite).

I personally loved sharing a room because we gave each other back scratches at night (I always told Jennifer "Scratch mine first, and the longer you do it, the longer your back scratch will be"...of course, hers never were...if they actually happened). I aso enjoyed using this time together to create scary shadows with my hands on the corner of the wall (Jennifer's all-time favorite was the witche's claw), letting her think she was adopted, or pretending to run away.

We would act like we wanted nothing more than to have our own rooms - we begged and pleaded with our parents. We finally got them, when I went into the fourth grade, and our shared room became the play room. Of course, we only missed each other at night and would want to sleep in the same room...in the same bed. We came up with the perfect solution. One of us would come into the other's room and hide under the covers to make it look like we were one person in the bed. We'd let our parent's know "Jennifer said not to check on her tonight, she said she's really tired and just going straight to bed." It rarely worked.

We've gone from sharing a room, to having our own, and back and forth again. We'll have to share additional stories from when we shared a room for a year after we moved to the Bay Area (apparently there were some really scary sleepwalking episodes). No matter what our sleeping arrangements were, we always enjoyed having the other sister near.