More Peter

All us Abildgaards are high energy people.  As kids we were the most dynamic kids in our neighbourhood.  The other kids would wait for us to come out and then they would all be roving over to us waiting for us to come up with the plan of the day.  Our Danish babysitter would ask Mom “what do you feed those kids, dynamite?”

When we weren’t playing outside we were our own little group playing in the basement (Mom rarely allowed us to have friends in the house, that was way too big of a commitment for her).  Mom remembers one time when John and Peter came up from the basement and even though John had cautioned Peter not to say anything, which he in his young mind thought he was obeying, he said “we didn’t have a fire in the basement”.  Well Mom ran down those 13 steps like she was going to the Olympics and discovered that John had lit matches and then dosed them by putting carpet on top of them.  Mercifully there was no fire but Mom had her eye on those two boys for months!

When Peter was about 9 or 10 I discovered that he liked to read and as I was starting to have save my allowance for birthday and Christmas presents I got him started on The Hardy Boy books.  I started him on a collection of other books as well, books from TV shows like “F Troop”.  Kmart was our shopping place and they had a nice little section of books and toys that we all gravitated to when we went shopping.  Sometimes Nette and I would take the boys (Peter and Erik) to the lunch counter and we would have jello or a pop or sometimes a donut.  Not often, but sometimes.  It was fun.  We pretended like we were in an Archie comic.  Which reminds me, I also bought the boys a lot of comics, Peter liked Spiderman, Fantastic Four and Thor.

I also remember Peter liking “Simba, the White Lion” cartoon.  We watched that together, it was the only cartoon I watched at that age (I pretty much gave up cartoons when I was about 9, except for “Beanie and Cecil” because the Barbie commercials came on at that time!)

Oh, and now to embarrass the living daylights out of Peter – one funny memory I have is when Farmor was on her visit.  She wore corsets and Peter was absolutely fascinated by all the hooks.  He would hook up her corset for her (he would have been 4 years old).  She never had the corset on tight (she was pretty rolly polly) and really only wore it for a garter belt.  But I do remember how cute Peter was sitting on the bed and seriously hooking the corset up nice and even.  He was such a good boy!