Who is this "Bubbers" Person Anyway?

Some time during my fourth year, when it was surely already too late, my parents asked if I wanted a baby brother. My reply was, “No, but I'd like an orange balloon.” Later, I rescinded, and instead decreed that they “hop to it!” In March of 1983, Stephen Michael Haslett was born.

I thought he was neat. But those of you who know me know that I'm not much of a girly-girl. I'm by no means a princess, not into playing dress-up, not into dollies. So, by extension, I found making mud-pies in the forts I built under the lilac bushes preferable to the new baby. As he got bigger and more interesting, though, I did deem him worthy of a nickname. It was “Bubbers-Chubbers-Diddle-Little-Lubbers,” recited in that sing-songy chant that seems to be hard-wired into every preschooler. Na-na-nana-boo-boo. You know the one.

And just “Bubbers” for short.



As he got bigger, he started to call me Sissy, hard “k” and “th” being difficult for toddlers to pronounce. It took me a while to understand that Sissy was meant as a term of familial endearment, and not the insult tossed back and forth by my exclusively male playmates along with the wiffle ball. I forgave him the initial insult, and before I knew it, I had a second shadow.



He is the very same Stephen as in my first post – the Stephen with the brain tumor. I'll spare you the suspense. He didn't make it.



This blog is for him. A vehicle to remember him by, and to introduce him posthumously to my friends (and friends of his friends) who have heard of him, but never met him. A way to tell his story without the crawling discomfort of trying to console the listener who is squirming and wishing they'd never asked if I had any siblings in the first place.


I suspect that this will also be a blog for me. A place to put it all down, and put it all away, and recall events that I've forgotten. I welcome and encourage questions and comments. I'm hoping they will jog even more memories, and flesh out my single point of perspective on who exactly this kid was.



Finally, hopefully, this blog will become a place to help something positive come from something awful. I'll get into the “something positive” shortly, in a future post. So bear with me. Just a little premeditated insanity that I've been considering for a very long time. We'll even have fun, I promise.

And no, I never did get that orange balloon.
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To donate to St. Baldrick's in honor of Stephen, click HERE!
See the blog post on "Binary Voting" for details on how to vote for or against my head shave!