What is Normal, really?

OK, you know how when you are growing up, you think your life is pretty normal, and I thought my life was definitely normal. My parents never fought in front of us, they weren't drinkers, we went to church every Sunday. Like I said, we were normal. I would even go as far as to say we were like a Norman Rockwell family. I am one of 4 children and my mom didn't work (not enough to count really) and we ate family suppers together, watched TV together. I shared a room with my sister and my two brothers shared a room together. Growing up with three siblings was not always the greatest. Needless to say, there was a little bit of fighting going on. I didn't start getting along with my older brother until we were out of high school. He was married by then. It takes boys so much longer to mature doesn't it? My sister and I got along pretty good when she was home, but she was about 8 years older than me so by the time I was about 16, she had moved out. My younger brother is about 10 years my junior, I know, my parents were so in love weren't they. My uncle once told my dad he was going to screw his way into the poor house.
All of that so I can tell you a story about my sister when she was young. We live in the country and at the time, my grandfather owned the land that we were building our house on, so like a normal, wholesome family, on Sundays we went to our Grandparents house to eat. That was the whole family, my moms sisters and her kids and she happen to have a son the same age as my sister. They were probably 4 or 5 when this little incident took place. Lets just say my cousin was all boy and like any other little boy he wanted to play cops and robbers. Well you know a girl can't be the cop so as luck would have it my sister got to be the robber. My cousin (Rob) found a little gun in my grandfathers drawer and decided it looked like a perfect gun for a shootout. It turned out it was perfect, while CG was running down the stairs to get away from Rob, he shot her. Turns out the gun was real. She was shot in the side and it came out towards her back. A through and through as they say on TV. My parents took her to the hospital where they cleaned the wound and then sent her home. Can you believe they just sent her home? I was amazed. She told me that they went back to my Grandparents house where my cousin was sitting in a chair crying, because he just got his tail tore up for shooting her. I guess there was some justice in the old homestead.
I heard that story for the first time when I was in my teens, I have to say I was a little scared of my cousin after that. But I got over it, after all it was just an accident.
I can honestly say that we were so close to those cousins. We went to their house all the time and they came to ours. They were more like our sisters and brothers than cousins. And they have stuck by us in the worst of times. Good people. Just don't give them a gun.
Only kidding!