Ranked and Razzed

When I was twelve, I found EVERYTHING to be extremely embarrassing. I was going through all those awkward dorky changes where I would put on weight for no reason at all, then shoot up twenty inches in my sleep and my jeans would be high waters before I even wore out the knees.

At the time, I lived with my dad, who was remarried—which meant I had a stepbrother. He was thirteen first, so he always rubbed that in, treating me like a baby. Ugh, nothing like a stepbrother needling you every day. (We even broke the knob on our t.v.—yeah, this was before remote controls—fighting over watching the A-team or Little House on the Prairie.)

Anyway, he had this habit of hanging out with his buddies in the kitchen while I was stuck in there doing chores. Standing at the sink, up to my elbows in suds, while he and his friends “ranked” on me, as we called it then, was a nightmare. Ignoring them was even harder. At that age, I was all oogey about boys and stuff, not knowing if I wanted to like them or hate them the rest of my life and become an old lady with billions of a cats.

Of course, when I eventually had my first kiss—there was my stepbrother, staring out the living room window and laughing at me. Talk about embarrassing. I often wondered why I was born in a time when ranking was as popular as break dancing and The Karate Kid. (You can bet I wanted my own Mr. Miyagi to teach me to kick butt!)

They almost made me choose the cats.

Well, I’m a writer now, and I get to use that stuff in my books—and my stepbrother? He is a police officer in a big city—who got razzed when he was fresh out of the academy for crashing all his cruisers. What goes around really comes around, doesn’t it? :)

J.R. Turner is the author of the Extreme Hauntings series. The first book, DFF: Dead Friends Forever is available at Amazon.com, Kindle, Fictionwise, and Echelon Press.com