West: Older brothers taught me plenty of life lessons

My belief is that each life you come into contact with will in someway impact the person you become and for me my two brothers have greatly shaped who I am today.
When you are the only girl and you are the youngest child you better be ready to enjoy the tom boy lifestyle. Playing with Barbies and babydolls won’t happen much unless you are tearing the dolls apart because they are your opponent in the World Championship Wrestling (WCW) or the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) ring and this wrestling match is for the coveted title belt.
When I was seven years old the toy I so desperately desired was the life size Rapunzel doll that had beautiful long blonde hair and was dressed in a perfect baby pink colored dress. She was so cool to me because I could wear her clothes myself and she could also be dressed in mine. Rapunzel unfortunately did not last long in my house. It was her destiny to become the next victim of my two older brothers. While I was sad at first, I just decided it was better that I joined in on the fun of removing her arms and legs in a very intense wrestling match.
The lesson my brothers taught me in this instance was to roll with the punches and find a way to enjoy the things we want in life even if it is not the way we had initially planned on doing so. It was better to have at least enjoyed completely destroying the life size doll then to not be given the chance to enjoy her at all.
My ability to deal with pain has come from the many times that I was blessed with being the actual living wrestling opponent of my brothers. Nothing can prepare you for the Stone Cold Austin signature spear move quite like actually experiencing the wrestling move yourself which I can thank my oldest brother Elliott for. What can I say, we got into the playing so much sometimes that we forgot that it was just that, playing.
In our large game room, Elliott on one side of the room and me across the way, he took off running as fast as he could dropping his shoulder and ramming me right in the stomach. The breath was literally knocked out of me. Of course I didn’t tell on him. After a few tears and finally catching my breath again, I stood up and we were right back at it. That moment taught me that I must always stand back up even after being knocked down hard in life.
Wrestling did not always consume our time, however. My parents very much so wanted me and my brothers to spend our time playing outside but they probably were not expecting that while outside the middle child, Aaron, would stab their little girl, me, in the hand with a screw driver. Of course it was an accident but man did it hurt.
All we wanted to do was build a dirt castle. Aaron would use the screw driver to break up the dirt and then he would tell me when to move that dirt over closer to me so that it would be out of the way and he could continue breaking up more dirt. As we were sitting facing one another, everything was running pretty smoothly until we both got so much into a groove that Aaron told me to move the dirt but forgot to not beat the screw driver into the ground.
Next thing I knew the end of a screw driver was stuck in between my pinky and ring finger pinning my hand into the ground. Thank goodness for the nurses that lived down the street that quickly came over to bandage my hand up.
Looking back at that event from my childhood my eyes are opened to the fact that sometimes the ones we love hurt us the most but that does not have to ever mean they love you less. Accidents happen and forgiveness and time will heal all wounds.
If it was a boring afternoon you can bet, as our neighbor liked to call us, Bebe’s Kids were going to create our own game that was usually set up with the odds always against me. One of Aaron’s favorites was aptly titled four wheeler dodgeball.  Aaron would jump on our much larger and faster four wheeler and me and my friend would pile onto her much smaller and slower four wheeler. The object of the game was to chase down the other four wheeler and hit the person with a basketball. The four wheeler I was on really only got the chance to throw the ball once because after we threw the ball my friend and I could not beat my brother to where ever the ball had rolled because he was on an actual four wheeler while my friend and me were on a kid’s four wheeler.
He liked to say we had to use the small four wheeler that way it made it more fair because it was two people against one person. Even with the odds always against me in that game and even though I was going to get smoked multiple times by a basketball I still loved playing. I still always hoped I could at least hit him one good time. Aaron and I’s creative side allowed us to create a game that showed me no matter the struggle I should still continue to fight to accomplish my desired goal.
For every time that I fell victim to my wild brothers’ good time, there are 10 times that I was a part of the actual destruction that was sometimes caused.
From playing baseball in the house and causing one of the little Astro’s bats, purchased at the last game we had attended, to fly into the wall leaving a nice hole in the game room wall which was then covered with the perfect Nick Carter Backstreet Boys poster that all of Aaron’s friends picked on him about, to hitting golf balls through my dad’s truck window, I have experienced a lot throughout my childhood that I can now look back on and interpret in a way that allows me to apply it to my adult life all because I grew up with the boys.
Each headache we caused our parents made for a great story and an even greater life lesson learned. In each memory that I have of me and my brothers growing up I, today, am able to see how each childhood event made me a more resilient, strong, competitive and determined person.

Elizabeth West is the Ville Platte Gazette's Associated Editor. She can be reached at editor2@evangelinetoday.com.