My Most Interesting Fact

You know those first-day-of-anything-introduce-yourself sessions? Most of the time you have to say your name, what school you attended and a fun fact about yourself.

I’ve been getting off easy.

Amy Willsey. MU. Identical triplet.

But the truth is I’ve been lying for years. Being an identical triplet isn’t the most interesting thing about me. Sure, I guess it is pretty neat. And it does evoke the reaction one hopes when giving an interesting fact to a bunch of strangers.

“No way!”

“Tell us more.”

“Are you serious?”

It’s also great that a single fact excuses all my annoying personality traits right up front: always speaking in “we,” my co-dependent lifestyle and my inability to have successful friendships outside my bloodline.

But if I were being honest all those years, starting at 16, my interesting fact would not just be that I’m an identical triplet — it’d be that as an identical triplet, I shared a car with my two sisters for seven years.  

I feel like people would be downright impressed with my ability to share. They’d also obviously assume I’m a great team player; therefore, I’d be recruited first for group projects.

Just two months before our sweet 16 it was decided that E, D and I would share a single automobile for an indefinite amount of time.

My parents were all like, “You guys do everything together so you can share a car and just go everywhere together, too. Power in numbers.”

And we were all like, “Do you want us to have unhealthy heavily reliant relationships?”

My sisters and I shared a ’99 Chevy Blazer for those seven years.  Yes, the most significant seven years of a young girl’s life: high school and college.

Barnaby, as we lovingly called him, really saw it all — car paint when Tyler asked Evan to the Homecoming dance, the front-end of Wade’s car when Dana reversed into it in the driveway, the drives across I-70 to MU and back.  

It was like an only child with three loving parents. Barnaby got all the attention and all the love. (It was irrelevant that the driver’s door was off its hinges, that it sounded like a diesel truck when it idled or that it started shaking at 80 mph.)

As the three parents, we often fought for custody and child support in the form of gas money.

It truly is an incredible survival story.  One that I wish to tell the next time I'm asked for an interesting fact.

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I’d hate to leave any questions unanswered, so for those wondering: Barnaby was replaced in May 2014 by three new-car smelling, smooth driving SUV impostors.

But that’s not where this story ends. We didn’t know anything about driving alone, as a single, through the rough streets of KCMO. It was so ingrained that we shared a car that Evan and Dana actually carpooled to their respective jobs for a few months this summer.

Old habits die hard.

As we’ve settled into the reality of driving our own cars, we’ve learned a few new things:

1. Buying your own gas and not splitting it three ways makes for heftier credit card statements.

2. New cars are needy. You’ve got to give it baths regularly, you can’t kick the door shut with cowboy boots on, you mustn’t eat cereal and milk in the backseat, etc.

3. Not having a passenger and backseat driver makes driving much more of a responsibility. Also, no one likes backseat drivers so our relationship is stronger than ever.

But the most important lesson learned thus far, in the 9 months Eddie the Edge has been with me, is that I’m 99 percent positive that my dad let the three of us drive an unsafe car for five of those seven years.

Tomboys Have More Fun

There’s no doubt in my mind that having sons, or even a single son before daughters will somehow affect the rest of your offspring.

Let’s just say I know from experience.

Starting the batting order with a boy won’t leave you with little princesses who love pink. It is, however, the perfect recipe to make up some tomboy daughters — older brothers are very, very influential.

I don’t think my mom knew what she was getting when the doctor broke the news that she was having triplet girls.

I imagine she first saw fear, which was followed by images of bows, tutus, exclusive tea parties and lots of tears. Instead she got backward hats, jean shorts, competitive sports and wrestling matches to solve any issue, which in turn induced fear.

Growing up, Evan, Dana and I did a lot of things that were probably frowned upon for girls. When asked why we did them, the answer was usually the same: “Well, Wade does it.”

We would mimic Wade’s actions, style, language and essentially his entire way of life. 

He was probably constantly annoyed, or what’s that old saying? “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” Yeah, you’ll have to ask him how true that statement rings. Experience tells me his feelings weren't of the flattery variety. 

There was the year (read: 2 years) that we wore work boots every damn day. Summer didn’t stop us; we just paired our Timberlands (I wish we were that ahead of the trend) with shorts. We exuded class. 

Looking back, they were probably my most practical shoe to date. 

The surface hasn't even been scratched on how deep the tomboy life runs. 

My childhood consisted of building forts, playing backyard baseball, making friends only with the best kickball playing guys on the playground and throwing temper tantrums when dresses were laid out.

Sorry, mom. About these things and oh so much more.

For the record, we did try to be girls for a little while. We talked my mom in to enrolling us in cheer class. That was fun for the sole purpose of annoying my dad and brother with repetitive chanting five, six, 12 times in a row. 

I’d just hate for anyone to think we didn’t give being girly-girls a fair shot.

I’d say we weighed our options, maybe made a pros/cons list and then ultimately decided tree houses were cooler than dollhouses and mud under the nails was better than paint on top of them. 

For any concerned mothers out there, the tomboy way of life comes recommended from three out of three Willsey daughters. And we turned out fine ... right? 

The Real OG (Original Gang-up)

I don’t want to say my family originated ganging up, but we might have been the ones who perfected it.

It’s actually a pretty miraculous story when you think of it. A family of six, a nice even number, managed to find the most effective way to make a few members of the family feel out casted.

Of course my parents never bought in. Still, four children found ganging up a frequent pastime.

But there’s more — an unexpected factor: a kindergartener named Geoffrey.

You’d think that sure, there’s still three little girls that would pool their brains together and gang up three-to-two on the guys. Girl Power, yeahhhh.

Nope. I'd like to make it clear that we got smarter with age.

Each week Wade and Geoff, starting when they met on Geoff’s sixth birthday, would recruit a new buddy to be in the gang. Evan was the chosen buddy for 192 weeks in a row.

That always left Dana and me to fend for ourselves. And fend we did not.

Instead, we often tried to barge into the cool club made in Wade’s room. Or lose all dignity by being the servants to the owners of the club — you guessed it, Wade and Geoffrey.

But really and truthfully the cherry on top of this pathetic watered down vanilla sundae was the time Wade and Geoff recruited Geoff’s older brother, Alex, to join the reindeer games.

Alex was, at the time and still is, a 6’3 athlete. On this particular afternoon in 2003, he was drafted to play on the boys’ team of tackle football in our front yard.

(They did give Evan back to Dana and my team, but really what was a fellow 5-foot girl to do in tackle football?)

Here’s where the parentals make an appearance to stop (which is a strong word for what actually happened) the unfair level of ganging up.

My dad said, “Someone’s gonna get hurt.”

That’s all.

A fair warning? Sure. But that’s like telling an addict he should stop for the sake of his health.

We needed to infiltrate the mighty duo. We were competing to join the legendary gang up and not be ganged up upon. We had to prove ourselves Hunger Games style. 

Now, at our respective ages of 25 and 23, ganging up is a thing of the past; we’re the best of buddies, and a few valuable lessons were actually learned from being shunned.

Dana and I are both well-rounded little competitors who understand the value of persistence — even when it literally never works in your favor.

Evan? Well, she isn’t well-rounded at all. 

Go To Branson, Ya Filthy Animals

There’s nothing quite like a family vacation.

Rushing to the airport just in the nick of time Home Alone style.

Packing more toys than clothes… then having to sit on your bag to zip it shut.

Arguing who got the middle bucket seats in the minivan, which was a must for Willsey vacations.

Because we always drove. And we always drove to Branson. I kid you not, we went to Branson every summer for like 10 years in a row.

That’s what a family of six gets. I’ll have one kid to satisfy the grandparents but still be able to take good vacays. Priorities.

But really, nothing beats Branson. Rolling into town after a 4-hour drive and seeing the lights. Oh so many lights on that damn strip – actually, are we sure our parents didn’t take us to Vegas, Dana? Wade? Evan? It would explain so much.

That’s just the first 5 minutes of getting to our destination. It’s only a matter of time till the smell of gas and burning pavement from the go kart tracks burns your nostrils. Followed by the sight of neon golf balls at the million mini-golf courses. Then the ungodly amount of fast-food restaurants in a one-block radius. 

Come to think of it, those were the best white trash vacations I’ve ever been on.

Every trip to Branson started the same way:

We’d put my parent’s 13-inch TV between the driver and passenger seats of our van, and my dad would rig up a way to make it work. The kids bring 10 VCR movies to rotate through. My favorite was always The Lion King minus the scene where (spoiler alert!) Mufasa dies.

We’d strap the white Excargo, full of our duffle bags (note, I do not call it luggage), on the roof of our gorgeous purple van, and leave the humble abode.

Our neighbors in Walden probably hated how we classed up our hood so nicely. We were constantly making them look bad with our luxurious vacationing. How annoying to have your kids begging to join the Willseys on vacation.

It wasn’t the go karts, or the mini-golf or even the Dixie Stampede that had us returning to the mecca year after year. It was the happiest place on earth: Silver Dollar City.

The Disney World of the midwest. 

Ah, Silver Dollar City – the place where your dreams take on a weirdly rustic haze, your waistline goes up a few inches, and most importantly it becomes perfectly acceptable to yell, “Fire in the hole!” whenever you deem necessary.

Moral of the story is that you should book a trip to Branson stat. Or just show up. Yeah, just show up - I think they prefer that. 

A Writer's Life For Me

There are dozens of things that happen in childhood that foreshadow later moments in life.

Some big. Most small.  

Oh your favorite class is reading? You might be an author, your parents think.

You bat both left and right? You’ll play varsity baseball, your coaches think. 

If we used my childhood, I’d be a large fuzzy animal of some sort. Yeah, I was healthily (not weirdly) obsessed with stuffed animals.

I did not, in fact, grow up to be a loveable, huggable, snuggable animal. I’m only 23, so there’s still time.

Instead I found the creative life. Or rather, the creative life found me.

You see, I wasn’t a creative kid.

The stuffed animal in which I was inseparable from was a bear dressed in a duck costume. (Flipping. Adorable.)

You know what I named him? Bearduck. Bear effing duck. I gave him a literal name. One so bad it's like I was repelling creativity. 

The most creative thing of my childhood was the language D, E and I spoke to each other before we knew the widely accepted usage of English. I’d like to say I came up with it, but that’s probably not the case. Plus, in retrospect a.k.a. home videos, we sounded like idiots communicating through the use of grunts and babble.

So no, I absolutely didn’t come up with it.

Even more creative: the way I defended myself. Biting. I bit people. And you know whom I learned that from? Dana. I took my sister’s defense mechanism and used it against her.

Like how obvious: “I bet she’ll never expect this.”

She was an even better biter than I was. We have the home videos to prove it.

.....

Was I a leader growing up? No. We split that job three ways.

Was I creative? No. You should see my pinch pot from art class. Actually you can’t since I’m sure my mom tossed it thinking it was a forgotten ball of hardened clay.

At the time did I think I was good at all things? Yes. And that’s truly how we got here. I could be anything I wanted. My dad said so.

 I chose writer.

 Did signs point this way? Hell to the no. 

 But here I am. So suck it, 7-year-old Amy. I did it without you.