Peggy and the Monkey and the MG and Me
My cousin Peggy is three years older than I am. We have been close ever since we were very small children and she dressed me up in little girl clothes like I was one of her dolls. As far as I know, only one photo exists of me thusly attired, which is one more photo than I wish there were of me thusly attired. I once told my mother that when I grew up, I wanted to marry Peggy. Grandma Swartz, standing nearby, reacted in typical Grandma Swartz style. “Oh, Stevie, you can’t marry your first cousin! Your children will be deformed! They won’t be right!” Mom’s wise reply: “For heaven’s sake, Mom, he’s only five years old! He’s not really going to marry her!” Why our children would be deformed was a mystery to me, but it didn’t really matter in the long run because Peg and I never married each other anyway. Peggy and I got to discussing birthdays once when we were kids, and we came to realize that I was born on September 22, and she was born on December 22. “We were both born on the