Contested Territory

The best place in our house was in the basement. The family room downstairs was the only place in the house not claimed by my parents, so my three brothers and I had free reign over it. It has a large L shaped sectional centered in the middle of the room facing a projector nearly as big as the wall. The best place to sit by far was giant bean bag we got from a garage sale was pushed right up next to the screen. Blackout blinds meant it was perfect for watching movies at any time of the day and the cold air that always seems to linger in basements was perfect in the summer.

The only downside of this otherwise kid paradise was the University of Utah football memorabilia that was plastered over all the walls. My dad had intended the basement to be his ‘man-cave’ so everything was either red, white or black, couches and bean bag included. My grandma had converted my brothers and I to the ways of Brigham Young University long before we understood what rivalry was, so the U of U has always been the scum of the earth. But our need to use the only other TV in the house outweighed our dislike for the red jerseys and signed photos.

Despite having his own man cave, my dad always watched football upstairs in the living room. This was perfectly fine to my siblings and I, it meant we had more time in the basement paradise. Without a parent’s, it left by brothers and I with a power struggle for who controlled the remote. Being the only sister among three brothers means you are always outvoted. When we were all younger I could beat them in a fight every once in a while if plain voting wasn’t enough, but now that we are almost all grown, them a lot more than me, I am vastly outmatched. It didn’t help that they’ve all done competitive wrestling. My older brother placed in region and my twin placed in state, so strategy and strength are both on their sides. My younger brother didn’t take to wrestling like the other two, but he’s the biggest out of the bunch at 6’3”.

Now that you’ve got the low-down on my competition, you’ll understand why I almost never had any claim to our basement. Whenever we went the democratic route to pick which cartoons to watch, my brothers always won with a vote of 3 to 1. I had long since been plastered with the title “tattle-tale” (only because I didn’t want my brothers to get hurt doing stupid things boys always seem to do, but they didn’t see it that way) so complaining to my parents wouldn’t get me anywhere. So I ended up watching whatever they wanted to watch, which consisted mostly of superhero cartoons and hours on end of Wizards of Waverly place or iCarly.

When our parents finally bought our first video game console, as a result of my brothers begging, the power struggle for the basement drastically changed. We went from group debates about what to watch to duels over to who controlled the tv. The only way to win these duels was to convince our mother to tell our sibling that it was our turn. Our days typically went like this: everyone would race out of the car and try to be the first to the basement. The first one there got the first hour on the PlayStation, though they would usually play as long as possible and only stop when they got kicked off by the next sibling. Then when confronted about their playing into the next siblings’ hour they would say,

“Aust, it’s my turn,” I would say. “It’s been an hour.”

“No it hasn't.” His eyes were still glued to the screen.

“Yeah it has.” I read him the time and he doesn’t believe me. I run upstairs to the all-powerful mother to plead my case with her. She tells me exactly what I had told Auston, so I run back down to tell him that I had been right.

“Aust, it’s my turn. Mom said,” I say. He plays until ‘he finds a save point’ and I only have a half-hour until my next brother comes to claim the projector.