Retrospect: Mellie and Rob

Self-tutoring about people and events from the past: the tutor mentions a brother and sister he knew.

Mellie and Rob moved in a few doors down from us back in 1977. If I recall correctly, they probably moved into a house that had been occupied by someone cooler.

Mellie was older, and already interested in makeup, dating, etc: too old to hang out with kids my age. Her brother was older than I was as well, but only by a couple of years. He was bigger and stronger than I was just as you’d expect.

Like most successful bullies I’ve known, Rob was a social one. He enjoyed being cruel in casual situations. An example might be that if he was playing with one person and they were having fun, but then a few, more popular, kids showed up, he’d turn on the person he’d just been playing with.

One person Rob couldn’t bully, however, was his sister. Either because she was more mature, or just more intelligent, she could put a lid on whatever bogus thing he might try to start – and did. (Looking back, I wish she’d been around more often.)

One time they were playing marbles and I showed up to watch. They way marbles was played on the base, there was a “pot” that you aimed for; you stood around six feet away and tossed your marbles towards it, taking turns with the other person. The person whose marbles ended up, on average, closest to the pot, got to start the second stage of the game, which is an advantage, similar to how it is in pool.

Rob tossed one which went further than expected. “Gee – that’s the longest toss we’ve seen,” he observed. I don’t think he meant anything by it.

Mellie, who couldn’t care less about whether she won, got a gleam in her eyes and lifted her marble for an overhand throw.

“No…don’t just biff it way out there,” Rob pleaded.

Rob had a weakness: he liked things to go as expected. I think that’s why he was a bully: he believed the more popular kids should pick on the less popular ones, because it confirmed the natural order of things.

I was 7: much too young to understand any of this. I do believe, at age 9, Rob was already a control freak, and may even have known it. However, Mellie, at age 11, saw him as a dumb boy who was lost without being in control, and powerless to control her. For me, it was a beautiful scene to witness.

I think Rob’s age dictated that, soon, he couldn’t play with kids my age any more. He turned up less and less in the fields and playgrounds where I would meet the other kids, until he all but disappeared.

Years later, when I was 9 and Mellie was thirteen, I was crossing a field when Mellie, with another girl I didn’t know, called me over to a hammock they were sitting on. (It was a beautiful summer day.) Surprised, I went over to see what they wanted.

Mellie and her friend started asking me what this word or that phrase meant. I didn’t know any of what they were talking about. Looking back, I realize it was dating vocabulary they were launching at me. Each term or idea I didn’t know, they’d giggle at me. They weren’t being cruel, but just playful. Perhaps they were in awe to realize that not everyone had “grown up” yet. I left them, and never saw either again.

For me, Mellie and Rob were part of the landscape for a couple of years. They could be entertaining – especially when Mellie put Rob in his place. Neither was boring; they knew how to be popular and attractive from a young age.

I never met another brother and sister duo like them.

Jack of Oracle Tutoring by Jack and Diane, Campbell River, BC.