the great initial carving caper

My parents had this hideous furniture when I was a kid. It was all Mediterranean styled, mostly red and black I think, with wooden arms that had like knobs on the ends of them, kind of like you would see on a stair railing. It was hideous, but it went really well with a painting they had of three Spanish looking dudes that hung on the wall above it.

At some point, I got an overwhelming urge to carve something into the wood arm of the couch. I decided that the smartest thing to do would be to carve my SISTER'S initials into the couch. At least what I assumed my sister's initials were - CEA.  I was too young I guess for it to have registered on me that my sister went by a different last name.

When my mom saw it, Charlene got in trouble of course. When my sister protested that those weren't even her initials, I think my mom suspected she might be telling the truth, but couldn't definitively say one way or another which of us did it. It wouldn't be the first time a family member who wasn't technically named Aumack used the Aumack last name. Just ask my cousin Peter, aka "Gonzo Aumack" as he introduced himself at my brother's preschool.