Not There are four of us kids -- two boys, two girls. Three of us are stairsteps -- born just a year or so apart, and the youngest was five years behind the third -- an unexpected gift.

While growing up, my parents separated us -- the girls in one room, the boys in another.

And that seemed to work extremely well until someone came up with the brilliant idea to make one room a playroom, thereby, putting all four of us kids in the other bedroom.

Whoever came up with that idea should have had their head examined.

In all fairness, I think us kids talked my folks into it. I don’t know how we convinced them it would ever work, but we did -- for about a day.

Marty was about 9, Sharon was 8. and I was 7. The youngest, Steve, was not quite 2 and was still in a crib.

The crib, a single bed and bunkbeds were moved into one bedroom, and all the toys were kept in the other bedroom. That was fine during the day. All the toys were combined -- and therefore kept -- in one room, alleviating the mess that was formerly in both kids’ bedrooms.

It seemed to go quite well. That is until it was lights out. The minute we were all tucked in “for the night” (yeah, right) and the door closed, that’s when the fun began.

Bouncing basketballs, throwing styrofoam darts, hurtling stuffed animals -- anything we could pick up and heave at each other across the room was fair game. And if you could make one of the others cry, that was a bonus.

It was fun, until we heard Dad’s heavy footsteps coming down the hall. We all then quickly scrambled back into our beds and pretended to be asleep.

The door would open, and Dad would holler “You better be going to sleep in there.” That was enough to order silence. Until he shut the door and we heard his footsteps going the other way. And then, fun time resumed.

Steve, who was still a bottle baby, usually had orange juice to go to sleep with. That night, he was particularly annoying with his crying, and no amount of telling him to be quiet would help. It just seemed to rile him even more.

Marty got this brilliant idea to play squirtguns to amuse Steve. The problem was, he had no water. The solution was, he had orange juice.

So Marty filled the squirt gun with orange juice and proceeded to give Steve a juice bath.

Well, you know what happens when orange juice mixes with hair (and clothes, and anything else). Yes, it becomes a sticky mess. And Steve had the curliest hair I had ever seen on a boy, and that made it even worse.

Steve began to scream, and the foosteps came down the hall again. This time, though, Dad flipped the light on, and Mom was standing right beside him.

Now, we were all (sort of) afraid of our Dad, but we were terrified of our Mom when she was angry. At 4-foot-11, she had the power to make us quiver in our boots. It wasn’t anything she physically did, it was the look in her eye. We knew she meant business. Dad was more of a pushover (he still is).

When Mom saw Steven’s hair matted to his head like a wet dog’s, the toys scattered all over the place and the wall decorations on the floor, she realized the promises to “be good” really meant nothing coming from four kids under 10 years old. And she knew it had been a terrible mistake putting us all in such close proximity for more than a couple hours at a stretch.

Steve got a bath immediately, and I could hear Mom “muttering” (that is a nice way of saying she was really mad) as she tried to wash and comb the dried orange juice out of his hair.

The next morning we were sent out to play. When we returned for lunch, there were two separate bedrooms again. Everything had been put back in its original place as if it had never been moved.

And we, wisely, said nothing.

To this day, on the rare occasion when the four of us get together, we never fail to talk and laugh about that night of “fun” we had.

Mom just gives us that look. And silence follows. Yeah, she’s still got it.

Lisa Carnley is managing editor of the Lampasas Dispatch Record.