Christmas in a Thimble

I traveled to Ada to visit one of my Aunt's today. It was the first time I've been there in a while and just driving through town brought back a lot of memories. As we turned down the dirt road that lead to my Grandparents house,  I got kind of choked up. A lot of my childhood was spent on that dirt road. The first time I ever remember sweat running down my brow and into my eyes was in the garden while  picking green beans with Grandma.  A typical Christmas at Grandma's was noisy. The house was tiny and the wee ones were many. Not all of my cousins were as well-mannered and refined (chuckle chuckle) as my brother and I were required to be.  Running, screaming, giggling was not encouraged (and barely tolerated) especially when all the kids came together. With just the adults, the house was busting at the seams, throwing a bunch of sugar hyped cousins together made it sheer mayhem.  The aunts were constantly telling us to keep it down.... Apparently we were "making Grandma a nervous wreck", but truth be told, it wasn't Grandma doing the complaining. The actual nervous wrecks shall remain unnamed, but we know who they are. When the noise (or nerves) reached a critical point, we all knew what was going to happen. Grandpa had a tiny room off of the kitchen the size of a bathroom stall in a convenience store.  It contained a twin bed, a dresser, and grandma's sewing machine. The room didn't have an actual door, it had a plastic accordion door.  The aunts would round up all the cousins from the wee ones to the teenagers, all of whom were hyped up on sugar and Christmas excitement and tell us to keep it down so Grandma wouldn't get upset.  One of the Aunts would pull the door closed while whispering threats of punishment to come if we didn't keep it down.  Keeping it down was a gross misuse around our group, several of whom thought keeping it down meant grabbing a sibling or some other unfortunate soul and having one cousin hold em while the other beat the dog out of them.  Before the door closed, an Aunt would reach in with a thimble in the palm of her hand and say.... "Here, y'all play hide the thimble very quietly until we tell you to stop." We probably weren't, but it seems like we would be stuck in that room for hours on end. Someone always ended up getting hurt or something would be broken, and of course there was always a crybaby amongst. It was like a special ward for the criminally insane which just happened to be children of nervous adults.  But when I think of my Childhood Christmas', I always go back to playing hide the thimble in the tiniest bedroom ever made with a bunch of rowdy boys and a few girls. That's my childhood memory, not in a nutshell, but in a thimble, and it always cracks me up.