By Lorry Myers
She was in my brother’s class and in church on Sunday morning. Donna Dick was the cutest girl; dark hair and bright eyes and a wide smile that screamed “I’m nice”. My little brother didn’t pay attention to distractions like girls. Greg’s eyes were always on a ball and since I was a tomboy, we spent a lot of time together.
Sometimes too much.
My brother was a competitor and we competed at everything. Greg knew exactly how to trash talk and throw me off my game. He would pick a boy from my class and start singing that we were sitting in a tree…k-i-s-s-i-n-g! “First comes love, then comes marriage, then….”
You know how that goes.
This day, my brother was singing about me kissing a boy so I decided to get back at him by singing a song of my own. I made the whole thing up right on the spot. I turned up my volume and started singing Camptown Races, a song we both knew from music class. Only I sang the tune with my own words and it went like this:
Greggie Greggie
Take your pick
Doo-dah doo-dah
Pick that cute little Donna Dick
Oh, de doo da…
You know how that one goes, too.
For years, if I wanted to irritate my brother, I would sing about cute little Donna Dick. Then slowly, almost without noticing, my brother and I grew up. The neighborhood games came to a stop and the goofy “Greggie” song was left behind.
Life moved on.
After high school, Greg spent two years at college then dropped out and headed south, working hard at finding himself. He called one day and said he was moving back to Missouri and going back to school. Oh, and one more thing, there was someone who had helped him make that decision.
That cute little Donna Dick.
Greg Sewell was “blessed” with four very opinionated sisters and Donna knew she had to get through us to get to our brother. We wanted a wife for Greg that looked at him like he was the king of the world but would also stand up to him when he behaved like he was the king of the world. We wanted a woman in our family who understood the ties that bind us because if she loved Greg, she would have to love us too.
If you want one, you have to take us all.
Donna strolled into our family like that’s where she belonged. She could take a joke, make a good holiday dessert and hold her own in a poker game. Then on a family float trip, sitting around the campfire, my brother told a story about a song I used to sing, one that he could never quite get out of his head. The song encouraged him to pick Donna Dick.
For the complete column, see this week’s edition of the Centralia Fireside Guard
