Chapter 1

I am the middle child of five kids:

Peter 23
Polly 22
Paul 21, that’s me
Pamela 20
And Penelope 19

Our last name is pronounced (pen-cils)

Mom and Dad’s explanation for having five children in five years was that mom (Paula) wanted to get her figure back. She was and still is a literal trophy wife. I’d seen pictures of her winning some modeling awards, but the story isn’t really about her.

Dad (Peter Senior) also wanted her to get her figure back and agreed after Penny was born, to have a vasectomy.

He explained it to us as being a birthday present to Paula.

She explained it as not wanting anything to droop and sag and at her current age of 43, nothing was either drooping or sagging on the front or back of the really hot chick that I call Mom.

Dad was the best and thus the highest paid lawyer in Nevada. One of the reasons that all five of us kids had gone to a very well-known University almost 400 miles away in Utah, The University of Utah.

Dad’s great great grandfather came from Finland With the last name of Pennyslasson and over the course of time our last name evolved to become Pennsyls causing my youngest sister to have the most alliterative name of the bunch, Penelope Pennsyls.

Fortunately her middle name was Anne, which was what we all called her nowadays.

Peter was going for his masters in political science. Polly was in the process of getting her second bachelor’s degree in fine arts.

I was halfway through my bachelor’s degree in physical education, while Pam and Anne were loading up with required classes changing their major every other semester.

With dad’s power and influence, we were all in the same off-campus housing in three large apartments all on the same floor.

Why only three?

My older brother Peter had the brilliant idea that he and Polly would share an apartment, then I would get my own and Pam and Penny got one to share.

Why is that so brilliant?

Because we were getting monthly checks from dad all the while he was assuming we were in five separate rooms. We took all the money and split it five ways which is better than I had expected, considering my brother was the one who brought it up.

We took each other’s pictures posting them on Facebook hopefully making both mom and dad happy and keeping them from the unlikely idea of coming to visit us.

We have a plan in place provided they gave us at least a day’s notice with some friends in the same building.

Peter was two semesters away from being done with school with a plan to move to Northern California to go to work for the political arm of Google. That was a done deal that he hadn’t told dad about but he didn’t seem to care.

He didn’t have a girlfriend at least a regular one to drag him down, as he put it.

All three girls and I were working together to get as much school work done as possible when Anne asked me, “Why are you not dating anybody, big brother?”

“Girlfriends are just too much trouble when you’re trying to get good grades,” I responded.

“If you weren’t my brother,” Polly said, “I would date you.”

That got the girls all arguing about which of them would be the best for me if I could date any of them!

“Ladies, that is a ridiculous concept on its Merit! I can’t date any of you because you are my sisters that’s it ... end of discussion, OK?”

Pamela responded to that by walking over to me and asking me to stand up.

Worried about what was just about to happen she said, “Take a picture of us please? Now each of you stand next to him and we will take a picture.”

After that was all done we all looked at the pictures with Pamela saying, “I think Penny looks best with him, don’t you?”

They all disagreed again until Penny had an idea which was both fascinating and very very dangerous.