My brothers saw my mother in a whole new light. She had risen to the level of a superstar, in their little eyes, for she had become a kindred spirit; she had become one with the devilish delights of all that was disgusting, and my brothers loved her all the more for her repulsive juvenile inventiveness.

My mother was a creative soul who knew how to improvise when the occasion presented itself. She always had quite the imagination and the greatest ideas when it came to our childhood games. At the same time, she would also tell us the wildest yarns about her childhood. As children, we looked forward to her stories. We would snuggle in close and listen in quiet awe, for we did not want to miss out on a single moment of her childhood adventures.

One day, Tommy came over, and we decided to play sheep camp. It was that time of the year when the ranchers loaded their stock and took them to the mountains to graze for the summer. So, the two of us decided we would be sheepherders for the day. Now, we had a couple of old trucks and sticks for ramps to load the sheep in the back. The only problem was that we didn’t have any sheep. So we thought, and we thought about what we could use for sheep. Finally, we decided we could use flies. They were plentiful, and the folks always complained about all the flies, especially those in the barn.

We found a couple of old jars with lids. We didn’t want our flies to die, so we took a nail and pounded holes in the tops. We found a rock to use as a hammer because your grandpa didn’t like anyone messing with his tools. We also put some leaves in the jars so they would have a place to rest.

Once in the barn, Tommy and I went about catching flies. We wanted to have a large herd, so capturing just the correct number of flies took us quite a while. After we gathered our little flock, we were ready to start our mountain trip to take our sheep to graze in the Muddy.

We collected the flies, ramps, and trucks and looked for our own version of a grassy mountain valley. Finally, we located the perfect camp and found twigs to make little corrals. Then we backtracked to our “ranch” and prepared to load our sheep.

Settling in, we opened the lid of the jars, but we had a problem. The flies started escaping! Quickly, we slammed the caps back in place. Now, what are we supposed to do? We had spent hours catching our herd, so we had to find a way to solve this problem. We couldn’t just let them get away!

Tommy looked at me, and I looked at Tommy. And in two shakes of a lamb’s tail, we both grinned. Then, talking at once, we both came up with the same idea. “Pull off their wings!” We screamed in unison. And we took on the difficult task of catching flies and removing their wings. Soon, we were back to counting sheep.

Finally, we had our herd, and we could begin running our sheep up our ramps and into the bed of our trucks. Using tiny twigs as a staff, we guided each fly until they were safely secured in the pickup bed. That proved tougher than we expected, so we finally picked them up and loaded them ourselves.

We drove the trucks to our mountain pasture and carefully unloaded our “sheep” into the corrals. After our long, adventurous day, we were tired, so we decided to call it a day and pick up where we left off tomorrow. It was a great day.

We all sat there in shocked silence until everyone started talking at once.

“That was cool!” My four brothers yelled in agreement.

“Gross,” I sputtered, but I laughed at their delight.

And at that very moment, my brothers saw my mother in a whole new light. She had risen to the level of a superstar. In their little eyes, she had become a kindred spirit, one with the devilish delights of all that was disgusting. And, of course, my brothers loved her all the more for her repulsive juvenile inventiveness.

And so it goes without saying: because of my mom, life at my house was never dull.