Look who has something to say...

Hey look! A guest blog! I promised I wouldn't editorialize so without further ado, Rusty speaks...

After Laura posted a well-photoshopped but oh so bogus picture of me in a Prius, I guilted, convinced her into letting me be a guest blogger. I felt a responsibility to come here, being the lone voice of reason, and shed the real light on some of the happenings that are shared here.

Let’s start with the Author herself. Laura is the youngest of four siblings. She had the fortune of having our Parents already broken in by the time she came along. She started off as a quiet addition to our family, sometimes lost in the chaos that we other three Angela and Tony were creating. She was usually willing to go along with whatever Tony was getting into, as they were so close in age. As she got older she was more content finding her own trouble to get into, and then it happened. She started to talk. Now I’m not saying we were surprised she could talk (maybe a little), we were surprised at the quantity. She could carry on full length conversations at two years old. It didn’t even matter who they were with. One of us, my Mom, the dog, various toys and dolls, she just didn’t care. I was convinced that this kid would talk endlessly until she passed out from lack of air. The quality wasn’t even as impressive as the volume. She sensed that some of her conversations weren’t receiving the attention that she believed they should, so she would repeat them, only louder. The more you tried to ignore her, the louder she got. The dog would literally put his paws over his ears when Laura entered the room, to try to save his sensitive hearing.

We (meaning the other kids) had finally had enough. I went to my Mom to talk to her about our problem. “Mom,” I begged, “you have to do something about Laura”.
My Mom look confused. “What do you mean?” she said.
“Can we get rid of her? She won’t stop talking, she’s driving us crazy!” I told her, not believing that she didn’t know what we were talking about.
“Look, we’re not getting rid of her. You should try to listen to her; sometimes she says some funny things” my Mom told me.
“There’s no way that kid says anything funny” I thought to myself. “She just talks to hear herself talk”.

So I went back to break the bad news to the others, that I struck out and Laura was here to stay. I did take my Mom’s advice and try to listen to her a little, and I’ll be damned if she wasn’t kind of funny to listen to. From then on our relationship changed a little. Of course I couldn’t tell her that I found her to be tolerable on occasion, she was my little sister, but I could shut out the endless rambling and enjoy some of the things she said. It didn’t stop us from convincing her that the only reason we got her was because of a dog we wanted, and the people that had the dog would only give him to us if we took her also. That might explain why she’s such a cat person.

So the good news was I could tolerate Laura a little more, and that made my life easier. The bad news was either Laura figured this out or someone told her, and she thought that meant that I wanted to hear everything that popped into her mind. That misconception is with her still today. Although the conversations are often still tainted with useless dribble that she picks up somewhere in Oregon, they are much more entertaining. I know that there is not much I can do to talk anymore sense into her. I did all I could, there just wasn’t enough time. I do respect her for her passion and her lack of knowledge of things that she likes to argue about discuss.

I want to thank Laura for giving me the chance to write a little about her. I think her unique perspective is what makes her stories so appealing. It’s cool for me to see the same stories I lived through another set of eyes. As I grow older, I love to look back at the great times we’ve had as a family. I used to think everything would be so much easier if they would all just do what I wanted we all saw things eye to eye, but now I think how boring that would have been. It does, however, make for some interesting and loud arguments. There’s never a shortage of opinions at a Lucchesi dinner, and there usually all different. Being the oldest I’ll go ahead and take all the credit for Laura’s good sense of humor (even though she’ll never admit it), but I do want her to know I love her and thank her for entertaining us with her stories.