What a shock when the least likely of my daughters, in a fit of restless energy, decided to start wall-kicking in the tv room downstairs. She even tried to talk one of her sisters and her friend into it. Eventually she put her foot right through the drywall.

I was not expecting it from my firstborn.

Arwen is lovely most of the time aka all of the time except for the odd wall-kicking… apparently. She’s a passive first born with all of the honesty, responsibility, and help that come along with that, minus the aggressive first born’s testing of boundaries, except in the arena of wall-kicking.

Even Katie tried to stop her with many tentative, well thought out hesitations “Arwen, I don’t think that’s a good idea. Arwen I think you should stop. Etc.” It was all so weird because that’s what we thought Arwen’s job was.

When I was a kid I was always in trouble trying stupid things too fast. There was an energy level that was dangerous to be around as this aggressive first born was always trying invent a faster mousetrap. If ten miles an hour was fun, twenty would be twice as fun! If twenty caused a crash I would get a bandaid to stop the bleeding and level my speed out at 19.5 miles per hour.

There are certainly adrenaline moments in Arwen’s career, like the times we came up with ingenious ways to flip a sea-doo at high speeds on a lake in Montana. I thought she’d be more cautious but she threw that to the wind and had a great time, unlike her mother.

Erin’s marriage trust issues always seem to come up in those moments and with good cause, like the time the girls and I found an old railroad track that was underwater and explored it up and down with the sole purpose of freaking mom out. From a distance it looks like a narrow gap of water that would be impossibly shallow and cause an accident, but upon further exploration we realized it was deeper and were disappointed we hadn’t had the guts to hammer it the very first time.

Did I hit it with Erin on the back at forty miles an hour? Maybe. Did she freak out? Maybe. I think mistakes might have been made on both sides, but I was hoping we’d be mature enough to accept mutual responsibility. Turns out I was wrong.

I suspect she has passive first born syndrome herself with a side of control issues, but I’m no psychologist and am having trouble finding one who agrees with me.

I’m pretty sure Erin has never in her wildest dreams kicked a hole in a wall. Her jam is more common sense, feeling secure, and other safety-oriented things that are boring.

I’m a firm believer that if something is worth doing, it’s worth DOING. Safety and thinking often get duct taped together until the afterparty when my brain was like “SEE?!! You should have brought us along!! What were you thinking??”

Joke’s on you brain, I wasn’t thinking anything!

Arwen is the oil in the machine in our home. She keeps things rolling smoothly between the sisters and gets asked to do way too much of the work because we’re secretly tired of the Kope sister trifecta: Complaining, Having to answer too many questions, and Focusing Neela. I don’t want to say who the other two are because I’m a sensitive father.

Arwen is mom to the little girls and occupies the coveted “Do whatever you think is best” spot, but that’s because most of the time it’s what we would ask her to do anyways. It sickens me personally but I guess I was responsible when my brother Ryan came with us. It wouldn’t do if the Chosen One hurt his poor little leg playing tackle football with my friends, but I’m not complaining. It probably built character like shovelling snow and other wastes of time..

I don’t think I was home when the wall was kicked, but boy did I hear about it! If it was Neela we would all just smile and sigh, but ARWEN!!

I walked down the stairs with my game-face on, my arms went up in the air and I was working up to one of my famous lectures when something odd happened.

I couldn’t go through with it.

What came out was “Well, it’s hard to give you too much heck. I kicked a hole in middle of my mom’s kitchen wall once….”

Hopefully my dad remembers how he fixed it…