All I'm saying is give Pete a chance

CO-SIGNS: Get it? Mary's on left, mine on right.

This just in!

My sister Mary has created and hung a peace sign out front of her house. It's a beaut and it's in response to a challenge issued by our hippiest sister Charlene to spread the word.

I made one, too, though now that my excellent friend the writer, comic and smartass John MacMillan suggested it resembled a Mercedes crest, I'll never see it the same again.

John Schmon.

I'm very proud of this effort at making the planet a more peaceful place.

Here's the funny part.

SISTER ACT: Charlene's & Bertholde's

Mary hung her peace sign on the front of her house and she lives in the same one we all grew up in.

A storey-and-a-half home my parents moved into sometime in the 1950s, I think.

1950 is to now what 1900 was to 1973.

I find those ratios really intriguing. Here's why: I first became aware of peace signs and what they stood for in the mid 1960s. So let's agree that's about the time we all started teaching the world that they should embrace peace and forget about war and sing in perfect harmony and like that.

SISTER'N BROTHER ACT: Alex's on left, Norma's on right

At the same time, I wondered why people my dad's age didn't "just get over" the second world war. It was so long ago.

Turns out that in the mid-60s, the second world war was just about as far in the rear view mirror as is the street party we threw for Y2K and I think we might still have some empties, if not guests, in the basement left over from the party. Twenty three years.

And there's me thinking the adults should have gotten over the war.

Now I think the opposite. They got over it way better than I would have. Way better. Lord I was naive.

Where was I?

Oh right.

FEARSOME FOURSOME: Hey meester
you want to fight my seester?

Despite housing a dozen Carters, innumerable strangers and overnight guests, dogs, cats, guinea pigs and at one point a live chicken leashed to our backyard clothes line; and despite parties--so many parties with endless loud music and drinking and singing; and funerals and weddings and more parties; our house was a peaceful place.

I cannot remember my parents arguing, there was absolutely zero what other people called "horseplay," and I can only recall one real fight taking place.

I was nine or 10. My older-by- six-years sister Norma had said something about my dad that I disapproved of. To teach her a lesson, I climbed up onto one of the upstairs bed so I could reach up and land a left hook on her chin,

"And a righteous punch it was too," Chatelaine reported Norma saying years later, in an account of the battle.

The worst part?

The only pain felt by any of the combatants was the sheer humiliation suffered to this day by yours truly because what Norma did when I slugged her was laugh.

I hurts to type the words.

That's the only fight I ever remember happening in our house.

Small wonder we're a bunch of pacifists.

Peace.

(No sisters were harmed in the production of this story)