Leukemia-Be-Gone

Jeanna Bini on behalf of Kurtis and the siblings is organizing this fundraiser on behalf of Kurtis Tucker.

Donation protected

Listen up, everyone!

We’re coming together to muster up some ‘kick leukemia in the sensitive parts’ energy. After all, we can’t have leukemia camping out in one of our favorite people; Kurtis needs that like he needs a stick in the eye.

The biological siblings have all submitted their people juice (read: spit and cheek cell samples) to see if anyone is a match for a bone marrow transplant. We’re currently waiting for the results.

So… what can you all do? Please consider donating to this campaign—between Kurtis’ month-long hospital stay, continuing chemo, the upcoming bone marrow transplant, four kids, and Julie having to leave work to manage things at home, life is getting a wee bit stressful--and stress is bad for recuperation.

We know times are tough for many people, and if you can’t spare the funds, jokes and casseroles are perfectly acceptable contributions. (I know for certain they’d love pallets of casseroles. FedEx trucks full of casseroles. If the casserole piles aren’t at least waist high, they for sure want more. Especially if they’re oddly textured or slightly burnt.) But if you *are* in a position to donate, then come participate in the guessing game! Answer this question in your donation comment:

WHO WILL BE THE CLOSEST GENETIC MATCH FOR KURTIS?

Don't forget to throw in your favorite anecdotes about any and all of them in the comments while you’re at it! Kurtis, Julie, and the kids could use a bit of cheer and comic relief to buoy their spirits, and funny memories should be just the thing.

As for the guessing game - yes, there’s a prize for a correct guess (with a minimum $20 donation). We will be sending you (or a person of your choice) a batch of chocolate chip cookies.* It’s a genuine Tucker recipe, so it’s proven to be delicious. Furthermore, I promise not to meddle with it (definitely a good thing, as I’m currently in a goat’s milk phase). I will also include a plastic defense fork so you can fend off cookie thieves.

*Please note that I have a furry cat. I’m also anti-raisin, and the vetted recipe contains eggs, sugar, chocolate, gluten, and butter. But if you're okay with those caveats, then let's do this!

INSTRUCTIONS: Make a $20 donation and leave a private or public comment with your sibling guess and the word 'cookies.' When you see this screen below, click on "Continue" so you can leave a comment. Or you can put it in the Words of Support, or the original Facebook post!

Once we know the match, the siblings and I will go through the entries and use the 'thank the donor' feature to notify the winners and arrange delivery/shipping. In the event that no one is a match, I'll ask Google Assistant to pick a number from 1-5, and that sibling will be the 'match.' Chauncey is 1, Lina is 2, Charles is 3, Amelia is 4, and William is 5. (But let's hope that doesn't happen.)

There are pictures at the end, so examine them carefully! There are delicious cookies at stake.

Here are some more questions that you can answer, just for fun:

Who is most likely to be a match based on nose shape?
Who is most likely to be a match based on skin type?
If you were to guess, whose swagger is the closest to Kurtis’?
Who was most likely to be fishing while swabbing? (On the water, through bags or sock drawers, whatever. It’s all fishing.)
Who was most likely to be eating while swabbing?
Who was most likely to be sitting on the toilet while swabbing?
Who was most likely to send their first swab kit to the wrong location?
Who do you think sneezed in (or on) the swabbing kit?

For your entertainment and insight, here are 48 anecdotes from our collective memory vault:

Kurtis used to wear a spandex onesie for the high school wrestling team. If I remember correctly, it looked like he had a perpetual wedgie. (You’re welcome for that visual.)
William said my tofu kugel was gross. Out loud. To my face. (He wasn’t wrong, but still. Anyways, I ate the last popsicle in his favorite flavor, so there.)
Chauncey and Kurtis both liked to wipe their forehead sweat on people when they got home from their sports competitions. It sucked to sit next to them on the way home too—they radiated enough heat to make you nearly as sweaty as they were.
Lina and I pulled off all her Barbies’ heads because we wanted to see what was inside.
When Kurtis was a kid, he used to tell his family: “You would all shrivel up and die without me!” Lina believed him and it made her really mad.
Charles set a quarter of an acre of the Everglades on fire when he was 12. He and a friend were at a Boy Scout activity, and they decided to see who could jump over the highest flames. Helicopters and several fire trucks showed up to put out the fire. (I suppose Charles technically won. Sort of.)
Kurtis convinced Charles to pick up a shark in the Florida Keys and it bit him. They were *supposed* to pick it up together, but there was a misunderstanding about "1-2-3-go" vs "1-2-3." Regardless, Charles' leg must've gotten a poor yelp review, because sharks have refused to bite him since.
We called Kurtis a Spine Tingler (from The Elm-Chanted Forest) and a Skeksis (from The Dark Crystal) when we were kids because his nose is so huge.
Lina is famous for her pointy mobile nose--it wiggles up and down when she talks, especially if she's crying or laughing. (I can't throw stones though; mine is round and squishy.)
We were all big fans of putting food coloring in everything. Cake, frosting, cookies, eggs, meatloaf, pancakes… If we could put it in, we did. The green eggs were a little weird, but most things turned out fine.
Kurtis ate iguanas and bats on his mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.
Kurtis and Chauncey convinced Charles that werewolves were real and locked him out of the house while a neighbor came sprinting through our backyard on all fours with a werewolf mask on.
Charles once threw a rotten ostrich egg at a neighbor's house, and it blessed the block with an uncommonly durable fragrance. Oh, and just where did this grenade of foul (heh) goop come from? The other neighbors.
(Content Warning: Poop) Once, Amelia was taking too long in the bathroom, and William had been banging on the door for a while. When Amelia FINALLY sauntered out, William ran in and rushed to sit down. Unfortunately, his colon was faster than his legs, and a lump of organic butt clay fell on the floor. The siblings helped him hoist the garden hose through the bathroom window so they could spray off the floor poop. (NOTE: If you've got a crew that'll help you hide evidence of floor poop, keep them in your life. Those are the people that'll have your back no matter what.)
We used to make William and Amelia fight on the really big trampoline (the kind with the net sides to keep people from flying off) and take bets on who would cry first. One time, Amelia and William were having a battle, and William prematurely said he won. Amelia yelled back, “No you didn’t! I’m not crying yet!”
Chauncey co-opted Amelia and William into catching banana spiders for his job.
Amelia put glue in Charles’ dresser drawers. (Y’all, it was WWIII with those two.)
Kurtis and Chauncey were teasing Charles, and Charles got back at them by smashing eggs onto the back of one of their mattresses. It took their parents a while to find the source of the terrible smell.
Lina and I convinced William it was fine to climb WAY too high in the big tree out back. Then he got scared to come down, and our only suggestion was to drop so we could catch him. We didn't coordinate our arms in time, and he landed flat on his back with a loud thud.
Amelia and William put a rotten ostrich egg in the box garden outside and counted how many rocks they could throw at it until it cracked. Unfortunately, it didn't just crack--it exploded. And then they had to be hosed off outside. (Fun fact: Rotten eggs explode if you leave them in the sun long enough.)
Amelia convinced William to hit a coconut full of giant red ants with a REALLY heavy shovel. William barely grazed the coconut and failed to disturb the ants. He did, however, manage to hit Amelia square in the nose. She ended up getting stitches, and a mysterious 'no swinging shovels around' rule appeared out of nowhere.
Everyone would argue over who was next to read books in a series, especially about Harry Potter and Tennis Shoes Among the Nephites. I’m pretty sure I remember some thievery going on, too.
William peed on Amelia because she (once again) wouldn’t hurry up in the bathroom when he needed to go.
SOMEONE--no one ever ‘fessed up--would constantly clog the toilet.
Everyone would fight over who picked the TV channel. There was much yelling, wrestling, and blocking the remote sensor until a parent unplugged the TV.
During family scripture time, Charles would use different accents during his turns.
When William was around preschool age, he would flex his abs on command.
Both Chauncey and Kurtis tied up the landline—and thus the dial-up internet—talking to their respective moony-eyed harems. FOR HOURS.
Chauncey and Kurtis would go on double dates a lot in their teens so they could share the car. At the end of the date, one of them would circle around the neighborhood for 20-30 minutes while the other one “said goodbye” to their date.
Lina was a master with the defense fork. (She got unnervingly fast, so you poached brownies and cookies at your own risk. Even I wasn’t exempt from a forking.)
Several of the siblings talked or walked in their sleep. Once William woke up in the middle of the night crying about how Amelia cast a spell that was turning him into sand. They discovered a bug in his long-sleeved shirt, partially squished and smeared across his arm because he was trying to stop Amelia's nefarious sorcery.
One time, Lina sleep-walked into Charles' room and asked where Charles was. Charles said, "I'm right here," and Lina said "No, the other Charles." She was very confused the next morning when we asked which Charles she was talking about.
Kurtis once woke Charles up in the middle of the night yelling, "Go soldiers, go! Onward into battle!" Charles' laughter woke him up, and Kurtis grumpily said, "Shhh... I'm trying to sleep."
Kurtis, Chauncey, Lina, and Charles marched around the dinner table holding infant Amelia like a fruit platter while chanting “a sacrifice, a sacrifice, woo-woo!” until their mom made them stop.
Lina and I put baby Amelia in a laundry basket and skipped around the back of the house—where her mom couldn’t really see or hear us. Predictably, we banged Amelia’s head on a door frame.
Charles let Lina and me dress him up in her old recital dresses and paint his nails.
Lina was running around with a fork, tripped, and ended up stabbing it into the back of her throat. Blood. Everywhere.
If their mom made Kurtis angry when he was little, he would go to her closet and spite-pee on her shoes.
One summer, Chauncey and Kurtis played Monopoly all day, every day for weeks. They started making $1,000 bills once they ran out of $500 bills. (Oddly enough, cheating at Monopoly was allowed as long as you didn't get caught. Cheating at Uno was not. You know the ambush scene with the little dinosaurs in Jurassic Park II? Yeah. DO NOT EVER CHEAT AT UNO.)
Another summer, Chauncey and Kurtis spent a lot of time shooting off fireworks out by remote-ish canals. One day, a fire marshall went after them, so they fled over the hill and threw the fireworks in the bushes... like drugs. It felt like a James Bond scene, but it looked like a Monty Python sketch.
William pitched stomping fits every time he had to practice piano. But once his Mom said he didn’t have to play piano anymore, he decided he loved it and practiced all the time. Now he's an absolute piano genius.
One time after church, Charles put on my skirt and jumped on the trampoline just because. He said it was breezy.
Amelia would frequently (and without provocation) kick Lina in the face when they shared a bed as little kids.
Charles got caught smushing a banana on the neighbor’s door and had to do chores for them as punishment.
William hated to wear pants. As far as I know, he’s still not a fan of pants.
Amelia, on the other hand, couldn’t keep her shoes on to save her life.
Chauncey and Kurtis liked to sneak up behind people and push them into the pool, especially if the water was cold. For some reason, my mouth always seemed to be open whenever they did this to me.
There once was a glass coffee table in the Tucker household. When it broke, the neighbors came by to check on everyone because the crash was so loud. It's been over 20 years, and there has never been another glass coffee table in that house.