“Gerry, hurry! You have to see this!” My brother, Paul tugged on my arm and then hurried ahead of me out behind our McKay Street garage where the rabbit hutch stood.

     He had secretly dug a hole in front of the hutch then covered it over with twigs and weeds so that I, unaware, stepped on the trap and one of my feet plunged to the bottom of the hole causing me to tumble over on the ground.

     Brother Paul was still guffawing his triumph in tricking his gullible sister as he spaded dirt back into the hole and smoothed it over.

     Not to be outdone by a scheming older brother, I raised an eyebrow and thought to myself, “You don’t know who you are dealing with dear Brother!”

     I re-dug that hole and used his camouflaged technique to hide my efforts. A few hours later I told him in an excited voice, “You won’t believe what happened to Ganpapas!”

     Of course he rushed out to see what happened to his favorite pet rabbit. And of course he fell into that re-dug hole.

     What I did not anticipate was that he would sprain his ankle and I would receive a punishment for pulling an unladylike prank. Pleading, “He did it first!” made no difference in the court of high appeals on which my mother sat as chief justice.