It’s just a bed.

A little twin bed with a tendency to creak too much for our daughter’s liking.  It’s also way too small, according to Amanda, who is prone to exaggeration and has been dying for a new one for the last few years.

I remember when we all used to be able to fit in that bed. The whole family would  climb in together – Amanda, Rick, me and even Alec, who usually ended up falling into the crack between bed and wall and had to be rescued.

Much thought was put into buying that bed. We went to several different stores, my thought that it had to fit into a little girl’s room but be grown-up enough that if she wanted to take it with her to her first apartment, it would still be OK. I actually thought that.

It’s oak, with a white wash so it sort of matches her dressers, which also seemed important then. And it has an arched headboard and footboard with simple vertical slates and a trundle bed underneath that is concealed by fake drawer fronts. That also seemed important, the sleepovers.

The dressers were already there, one with a dressing table on top, which we bought with a matching crib. Amanda was two and a half and fine with her crib. Never jumped out or even tried. But the new baby was due in a few months and as custom dictated, the transition to the big-girl bed had to be done before little brother arrived (so the older kid wouldn’t resent the baby for pushing her out of babyhood and one day rock him so hard while they were sitting right next to the new bed that he bucked his head back and needed stitches).

Oh wait, that happened anyway.

Amanda was excited when we bought the new bed. Knowing me and the fact that I was eight months pregnant, I’m pretty sure I cried or at least wanted to as Rick dismantled the crib and put this giant piece of adult furniture in my baby’s room. The new baby would get a more neutral hand-me-down dresser and crib from his cousins, so Amanda’s would be packed up and sold.

We bought bright yellow sheets to go with a multi-colored comforter, which also seemed a shock to the system after the pastels of babyhood. Rick took pictures of Amanda lying in the new bed in her purple zip-up footie jammies, arms behind her head on the new yellow pillow, knees propped up and looking like a teenager.

She was so proud.

But not that smart.

In the morning when she woke up, she forgot she was no longer restricted by a crib and like she had been doing, called for us.

“I’m up,” she yelled. “Daaaddy, can I get up?”

Of course, my husband being my husband, couldn’t resist.

“Nooo,” he called back, both of us terribly amused that she didn’t know she could get up on her own.

I believe in some states, this would qualify as child abuse.

Rick was usually the reader and would lie in the bed with Amanda for at least five to 10 minutes before I’d find both asleep. As she got older, that bed was where I’d get all the very important news of the day that she was too busy or too bothered to tell me in her upright hours and would now be too horrified to share in the same detail.

It was also the bed where all the sleepovers took place, the first of them and in truth, most of them, her brother Alec making the trip over from his room next door.

She turned 14 on Saturday, after what we all decided was at least 18-19 months of being 13. And in a weak moment, with no other birthday present to offer and a very good mattress salesman doing his thing, we broke down and bought a new, truly big-girl bed.

This one has no real character, just a queen-sized mattress, box spring, metal frame and a headboard they “threw in” for $89.  And I’ve scarcely seen Amanda more excited.

It arrives tomorrow morning. So tonight, Rick is dismantling her old one and getting it ready for a potential buyer. Last night he took a picture of it for Craig’s List and we both remembered the last one we took with the purple footie jammies.

Hopefully, anyone interested will not mind the little dent where Alec’s head banged into it. Or the glued-in knobs on the head and footboards, so Amanda would stop pulling them out.

Maybe they’ll have sibling sleepovers in it too, and hear the same giggles late into the night as we did.

I will try not to cry as he boxes it up, mostly because everyone in the house will make fun of me.

Or maybe I’ll just go somewhere they won’t hear me.

I kid my son that I miss watching his baseball games (he was finished last month after the house league season ended) in much the same way I looked longingly at the high school gym at my daughter’s orientation until she finally urged me to go in and sign myself up for intramurals.

I remind them, whenever it seems appropriate and sometimes when it’s not, of my athletic prowess at their age. And as much as I am scornful of the kind of parents who live through their children’s usually meager athletic feats, I can’t imagine how I would keep still if I had kids who were gifted in some sport.

My 11-year-old son plays soccer and baseball, enjoys it, is exceedingly coachable and a good athlete. But when the summer comes and travel baseball takes over the fields in town, he enjoys his only few months away from organized sports.

Funny, but he never takes a break from music.

I remember when my daughter was in second grade and all the other girls had seemingly found their niche – they were ice skaters or dancers or soccer players or actresses. And I remember being actually a little nervous that Amanda, at age 7, did not have a chosen vocation yet.

She dabbled in everything, had fun, but she wasn’t specializing in anything. What was to become of her?

Eventually, after she sat me down and urged me to get help, I figured out that if you’re lucky in life, you will be exposed to a lot of different things. But if you’re truly fortunate, you will find your passion as it finds you.

I think Alec may have found his.

I took him to his piano lesson tonight and like I always do when I go, I sat in the room with him and his teacher, a wonderful woman who doesn’t mind the intrusion. I always go with a couple magazines but I rarely read them. Instead, I listen and not just to the music but to them.

As they talk about E-minors and C-majors, four-four counts and five-seven chords and syncopation, I can’t help but think of my piano lessons from Mrs. Carter, a patient woman who spent the better part of a year just barely getting me through “Swaying Silver Birches” and “One Less Bell to Answer” (I was into Burt Bachrach, what can I say?).

Like Alec’s teacher, Mrs. Carter was smart enough to let kids play songs they had actually heard of with the hope that this might sustain their interest in music. But by this time, I was also 14th chair clarinet in the school band and pretty much knew my limitations.

And Mrs. Carter and I never, ever talked music like Alec and Mrs. L. do.  

They seem to get lost in their conversations, their heads tilting toward one another as they nod and laugh in this secret language to which I am a stranger.

After less than two years, I am told Alec can transpose. I do not know what this means but I think it’s good. He came home tonight and as he always does, went directly to the piano where he told me he was composing a song of moderate tempo.

“That’s 120 to the quarter-note,” he explained and I nodded.

I remember when we bought our piano. Alec had just begun lessons about six months before and it was clear that the little keyboard from Costco wasn’t going to cut it. We planned to find the cheapest (used) piano we could get and maybe stick it in the basement.

I actually thought it might be disruptive in the living room.

Of course, we ended up investing in a new one – “Promise you’ll still like piano for at least another year,” I remember saying to him in the piano store – and we put it in the living room where it is a source not of noise, but of graceful melody  that we cannot get enough of.

There are countless ways we fail to influence our kids. Alec picked the tuba as his first instrument in the school band.

“How about trumpet?” we asked. “The trumpet is nice, and look how you can actually lift it.”

“Nope,” he shook his head.

“How about trombone?” we tried. “It’s bigger, but we can still tell it’s you playing it.”

“Nope,” he said again.

The tuba was the biggest, explained our son, who still can’t see above it. But two years later, he is still loving it and if he doesn’t end up playing piano in the Chicago Symphony, maybe he’ll be the dot above the “i” in the script Ohio in Ohio State’s marching band. Or maybe he’ll just play for his own kids.

Either way, my husband and I are not sure from where this love was born. We can only listen as the music dances under his fingertips, his soul soars and his passion is ignited.

I am writing this on the family p.c. Why, you ask, would I be writing on a big, clunky computer when I have a nice, new laptop I have finally grown accustomed to and even like after weeks of learning how to live without the track ball thing on my old Tribune laptop?
 

The answer is that for the second time in the last month, I left my brand-new power cord to my brand-new laptop in a press box, this time at U.S. Cellular Field after the White Sox game last night. Once again, I got away with it because it was found and I will get it back. But this time, God decided I wasn’t going to get away with it quite so easily and I discovered I have no battery power on my laptop.
 

So there was that to mope about today, along with the phone call from a woman asking if I wanted to subscribe to the Tribune with the pitch: “We’ve made some great changes to the paper recently we think you’ll like.” I guaranteed her that I didn’t like the changes and then I sulked about this continued forgetfulness that would be funny if I wasn’t reasonably sure, given my gene pool, that this portends some approaching form of dementia.
 

Two weeks ago, I left the same power cord in the Wrigley Field press box. And a couple months before that, I left a brand-new (it’s always brand-new) set of noise cancelling headphones in a large black case with a brand-new micro-cassette recorder also inside the case, in the press room at the United Center after a Bulls game.
 

I’m thinking of driving to Soldier Field tomorrow and leaving something valuable there, just to get it over with.
 

I didn’t get the headphones back right away. In fact, after two weeks, I was sure they were gone and I had concluded that the cleaning crew had stolen them, and that all people were inherently bad and dishonest and evil. Then a few weeks later, it popped up in the possession of Blackhawks’ personnel, who were given the headphones by the nice,   responsible cleaning crew and had been kind enough to put it in their office for safekeeping until the unfortunate knucklehead who forgot them thought of contacting the other team that inhabits the United Center.  
 

My brother Barry, he of the same gene pool, and I have a theory for all of this forgetfulness. We have decided that the more you try to remember something, the larger the chance that you will then forget it.
 

It works this way: If someone were to tell you that you had to bring a special package with you to work tomorrow or else you will be fired, you would tell yourself that this is VERY important. Then you would put the package by the front door. Then you would tell yourself again that you must not forget it. And then you would forget it.
 

Why is this? Our theory, if you’re still interested, is that it’s because you have done your job by reminding yourself and by putting it by the front door. It’s so important that you could not possibly forget it. And you have now taken yourself off the hook and ensured you will without question forget it.
 

After forgetting my power cord at Wrigley, NO WAY could it possibly happen again. So I was VERY careful the next few times, going through an exaggerated checklist each time I left a game: Be sure to wrap up the power cord. Check. Put it in computer bag. Check. Is it really in there? Check. Now look back at work area and make sure it’s not there as I walk out. Check.
 

I did this once, twice, realized I was treating myself like a deranged three-year-old and stopped. Of course, this would not happen again. So I took myself off the hook. And it happened again.
 

Pretty good theory, huh? Beats the alternative, too.
 

I can forget anything. When I was pregnant with each child and even now, I still have the nightmare that I forgot to feed my baby or put them in the car. Now that they’re 11 and 14, it’s on them to make sure I don’t forget to feed them or put them in the car. But it still haunts me.
 

It makes me feel slightly better that when I just asked my family for a recent example of forgetting Alec somewhere, no one could remember the particulars. So I’m reasonably sure this is one thing he won’t be able to blame on me in future therapy sessions.
 

But I’m also thinking now that instead of writing about my power cord, I had some other, stunningly clever blog in mind for today. If only I could remember it.

Reading my Sun-Times today and found out that the University of Chicago is now allowing men and women to room together in its dormitories, a new policy that 50 students will take advantage of, so to speak.

I’m trying to imagine what my father’s reaction would have been if I wanted to room with a boy in my college dorm.

I’m wondering how it would have gone if he had let me.

In all likelihood, it would have been no big deal, though at some point I imagine it would get tiring having to bring all of your clothes to the bathroom every time you wanted to change – which is how one girl interviewed said she was going to work it — and you’d just tell your roommate to turn around.

Then, pretty soon it would get tiring having to tell your roommate to turn around and you’d just change clothes in front of him.

Eventually, you’d start living like a regular married couple, walking around in your less-than-gorgeous underwear, nagging each other to make the beds and pretty soon you’d have a bunch of 20-year-old kids vowing never to get married at all.

The girl interviewed said she had a boyfriend, so no one had to worry that her roommate situation was “a romantic thing.” But then again, there is no fooling-around box to check if you want to room with the opposite sex at the U. of C.  If you want to room with your boyfriend or girlfriend, they can’t exactly legislate that.

If this is a shock to anyone, then they never went to college.

My roommate my sophomore year in college had a boyfriend whom she lived with – in their hometown 20 minutes away from campus. In other words, I didn’t really have a roommate, which worked out nicely for me until my roommate’s mother decided to catch her in this little scheme by calling every morning at 6 a.m. to speak to her.

Telling her that her daughter was at the library didn’t work so well. And she didn’t buy the shower excuse after the fourth or fifth time either. The goofy thing – which even at 19, I understood – was that of course the mother knew exactly what was going on and it really wasn’t necessary to wake me up every morning at 6 to prove it.

I remember when my sister Susie went to college, they were not only not allowed to have boys in their rooms, but they couldn’t have men in the building unless they signed in with the house mother.

“It could have been a dad, it didn’t matter,” Susie recalled. “But she’d call over the loudspeaker, ‘Man in the house, and we’d have to close our doors or cover ourselves up or something. “

Like all the women in my family, my sister tends to exaggerate, so it’s quite possible that the part about covering up and closing their doors was thrown in to make the story better.  She was madly in love with Marty Biviano at the time, so she can be excused for not remembering every detail clearly except that she had to stop making out with Marty and go back in the dorm in time for the 10 p.m. curfew each night. That, she remembered.

I also remember my sister, 12 years older than me, being horrified to learn that our parents allowed me to have a boy – a longtime buddy – in my bedroom in high school, where we watched M*A*S*H reruns and ate popcorn and my parents would usually fall asleep before he went home.

I’m not sure it was because my father had somehow mellowed since Susie was a teenager. I just don’t think, given my desire to play basketball and watch Bears games, that my father thought of me as a future woman at that stage.

Unfortunately, this stereotype followed me into adulthood.

Once, when I was working at my first newspaper job out of college, I was asked by my boss to share a hotel room with a male sportswriter on our staff to save money on a trip to cover a college bowl game. I was maybe 24, 25 years old, the guy happened to be about my age and I didn’t want to say no to my boss.

Of course, my colleague, a real wise guy, got a kick out of seeing my expression when I woke up the next morning to find his shorts and t-shirt on the floor between our two beds.

“Sorry, I can’t sleep with clothes on,” he said with a mischievous grin while still under the covers.

“No problem,” I said, tossing his clothes into the hall, “and you won’t mind if I straighten up a little.”

The U. of C. girl might want to keep that in mind if her roommate tries any funny stuff.

You would think that in all my years of covering sports that I would have run into more than one notable sibling rivalry. If I did, it couldn’t have been all that notable since I don’t remember it. Only one stood out and still endures and that’s Venus and Serena Williams, who will meet Saturday for the fourth time in a Wimbledon final.

It used to be a joke, Williams vs. Williams, and one I couldn’t defend.

Here’s the first half of a column I wrote in July of 2000:

Someday they may learn how to hide their tears. Eventually they will surely downplay their emotions, possibly even resent the implication that emotions are involved. But forever it will taint their rivalry. No matter how hard they try it will infiltrate the competition, eat away at their concentration and ultimately affect their performance. And there’s not a thing Venus or Serena Williams can do about it. It is their curse as women, as sisters. The dynamic was exposed last week perhaps as never before. But never before have the Williams sisters, or any other sisters, met in an arena as large as the Wimbledon semifinals, where one inalienable fact became painfully obvious: Women are different. Yeah, yeah, big revelation there. Next we’ll be telling you that charbroiled hot dogs taste better than the boiled kind. But it’s not easy to acknowledge. Suggesting women are unlike men in any athletic competition has the potential to strip away what it took Title IX more than 25 years to achieve. It is tempting to be disappointed, maybe even angry. To look at the head-to-head series between Venus and Serena, and especially at their lackluster match last week, and wish they could somehow put aside the sister thing, to rise above what their hearts are telling them. To act, well, like men. That is what we’re talking about here, because it would be different if they were brothers. As different as parents telling their little boys to “shake hands and make up” while telling their little girls to “play nice,” the implication being that boys can still be friends after a battle but that it’s best for girls to avoid the battle in the first place. I went on to offer examples of brothers who competed against one another and wanted nothing more than to bash each other’s brains in, content and perfectly able to separate their competition on the field of play with their relationship off of it.

But not sisters.

Maggie Maleeva told me that she found it excruciating to compete against her older sister Katerina on the women’s tour.

“The way we were educated at home was to always help each other,” Maggie said, “and it was very sad when one of us lost. It just didn’t feel right to be competing.”

For years, the Williams’ competition was anything but, the sisters turning in horrendous performances against one another and once getting booed off the court in Indian Wells, Calif., after Venus withdrew with a suspicious injury.

They were accused of fixing their matches depending on which sister needed the victory more. And all through it, they looked as if they would rather be having their cartilage removed than playing against one another.

In their defense, the Williams’ were no Maleeva’s and have been dominating the sport at the highest level for more than a decade now. There simply is no precedent – for brothers or sisters – at this level of competition.

And I am happy to report that I was wrong. The Williams’ have risen above the sister thing.

In a 2008 Tier II event, they took their match to a third-set tiebreaker for the first time – perhaps because it was a Tier II event — before Serena won. But their next match was their third Wimbledon final and it was arguably the best Williams vs. Williams match ever with Venus prevailing in two sets.

Serena came back and won in two tiebreakers in the U.S. Open final last year and then Venus answered in a three-set win at the year-ending Sony Ericsson Championships. This year, they split again with two more thrilling matches in Dubai and Key Biscayne.

Their overall series record is 10-10. And while they remain each other’s biggest supporters, they have also figured out how to put that aside when they are on the court.

For the eighth time in 10 years Saturday, a Williams’ sister will be the Wimbledon champ. Venus, who has won there five times, will be trying to become the first woman to win three straight Wimbledon titles since Steffi Graf did it from 1991-’93.

Serena, a two-time Wimbledon champion, once again proved her unparalleled determination on  Thursday, when she came back from match point down at 4-5 in the third set against Russian Elena Dementieva, to win in the longest women’s semifinal in history.

Some point to the Williams’ continuing domination as Exhibit A in what’s wrong with the women’s game. But one day they will also be recognized as two of the best players the game has ever seen.

They just happen to be sisters.