Gummi Bears.

We spent a lot of time with my cousin Jay growing up.  A lot.  So much so that our relationship feels more like siblings than cousins.  I was the oldest {and therefore the boss!} then came my sister Lyndsey, then Jay. 

We used to force him to be the dog a lot when we were playing house.  We also used to try to put barrettes in his hair because it freaked his dad out.  He played his fair share of Barbies.  To be fair, we also played He Man and Star Wars with him until his action figures got stolen out of my Meme’s Pacer when she was at the grocery store.

Such a loving family.

Once, when I was in the third grade, Jay was over at our house.  He is almost 5 years younger than me, so he was probably four at the time?  We were playing and getting into trouble as we always did.  Lyndsey and I got together and hatched a plan.

That is the way it worked.  There were always two of the three of us ganging up on the other one.  We just rotated who was on the outs with the other two.  We’re equal opportunity, some times it was based on age, sometimes gender, sometimes level of bossiness.  Ahem.

You’re cool, so I’m going to let you in on the plan.  Convince Jay that we were descended from Gummi Bears.  Not the candy variety, but the cartoon variety.

These guys.

I always wanted to be Sunni Gummi, she was such a rockstar.  Look at that blonde hair.  Lyndsey was totally a Gruffi.  He’s the angry one in the green hat.

So we tried our best to talk him into believing us.  He was holding out though, he just knew we weren’t descended from gummi bears so we had to step it up a notch.

We had to prove it.

We mixed up some Gummiberry Juice {also known as several packets of Smarties crushed up mixed with kool-aid for a straight up sugar rush} and made him chug it.

Then we stuck him in a dark closet, told him to close his eyes as we jostled him around and told him that we were riding in a quick tunnel. 

Ridiculous?  Of course.  But he was four and you can mess with four year olds pretty easily.  After all that sugar and our fake quick tunnel ride, he was convinced.  I think I also conned my mom into confirming it.

We are pretty much the best cousins ever, right?