Lessons from a Big Sister

“Have you ever smelled mothballs?” my big sister randomly asked me one day when I was about eight years old.
“Ummmm, nooooooooo....?”
And she skipped away without another word.
Now, I don’t know that she actually skipped away, but that’s the way the scenario plays out in my memory.
Years later (or perhaps months), I was playing with one of my friends in her family’s attic. I smelled something sickeningly putrid. “What is that godawful smell?!!” She explained mothballs to me and why we would use, in our homes, something that smelled so disgusting.
I was actually rather excited!
I walked home and found my sister making a tent in the backyard using sheets and the clothesline. I skipped - I really think I did - over to her and cried, “Robin! I smelled mothballs!”
Without missing a beat, as if all those many months (or years) hadn’t passed at all, she simply asked, “How’d you get between his legs?”