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Right now you're probably dreaming about sending your little brother on a space ship to Mars ... believe it or not, sometimes the Cowsills feel the same way about each other!
If your little brother is bugging you right this minute, don't feel bad. Someone in the Cowsill family might very well be crawling into another Cowsill's hair.
Like everyone's family, the Cowsills have those days when they wish they were David Copperfield-type orphans. ANYTHING to get away from each other!
To top it off, after a long day of "scram or I'll scream!" the Cowsills have to go on stage and be nice to each other!
SPECIAL LOVE
Very few family acts are ever famous and those that have success do so because, like the Cowsills, they've found a special, secret way to keep love in the family, even when they're in the middle of a knock-down, drag-out fight.
Love: Cowsill Style, seems a bit mysterious at first. Whenever they have a gripe against anyone, they say so! Which means that Bob might be running through the house, threatening to punch John for borrowing his best shirt, or maybe Barry and Paul are yelling at each other over who won the last game of pool. And everyone's probably mad at Susie for bugging them about their girlfriends.
Just like your house, huh?
UNBREAKABLE RULE
But the thing that makes Love: Cowsill Style different is that the Cowsills have one absolutely unbreakable rule set years ago by Bud and Barbara - no one ever goes to bed mad!
Mini-mom and Dad Cowsill discovered when Dick and Bill were just babies that to raise a family that stays together, they must keep peace in the house. They know that it's natural for people who live closely together to hassle and argue once in a while. So they let their kids work out their quarrels among themselves. In fact, when the whole family jumped into show business, they discovered that if everyone didn't let off steam when they needed to, it interferred with the quality of their act.
But the Cowsills all insist that at the end of the day, no matter who's quarreled with who over what everyone apologizes. If it means Barry and Susie sit up until three a.m. until they come to terms over whether or not Susie should play with Barry's model cars, then that's what happens. No one goes to bed mad so that in the mornings, the start of a fresh day, they have lots of Love: Cowsill Style to fortify them.
MUTUAL RESPECT
Another Cowsill rule is that everyone respects everyone else. Cowsill quarrels aren't Paul yelling "Bob, you absolute creep, you're so ugly only Mom loves you!" They all know that it's unfair to knock another person in a way they don't mean. They discuss just their particular problem, like whether Bob can stay out until 2 a.m. and John can't, and they don't drag looks, manners, friends or anything else into the talk. They "fight" fair!
So you see, just because the Cowsills play in places like Miami and Las Vegas doesn't mean they get along any better than your family. It means they know how to keep their family love on top, not buried under petty quarrels and strife.
Besides, it wasn't long ago that the whole family was so close they could touch each other practically without moving. Mainly because they were huddled together for warmth against a tough, Rhode Island winter.
TAKES TIME
When Bud first left he Army (Note: Bud was really in the NAVY) and put all his time into building the family act, he overlooked one thing: success takes time.
So one winter the family found themselves snowed in without enough money to heat the house. Hamburgers were a special treat - that's how tight money was.
In other families, life could be just terrible. The kids would begin to blame the parents and the parents would resent the kids and it could be terrible! But the Cowsills - Bob, John, Barry, Paul, Susie, Dick and Bill too - all kept cool (temper-wise as well as temperature-wise). They all pitched in and helped around the house and when Bud and Barbara seemed to be getting down-hearted, they had a private meeting and figured out a way to cheer their parents up ... like putting on a little play just for them.
THIRD RULE
They knew their parents were doing everything they could to pull the family out of it's hard winter, so they didn't sit around sulking and crying and feeling sorry for themselves because they couldn't go to the school dance. That winter the Cowsills learned the third rule to making their family a happy one. They never leave anyone out.
During the winter, all the Cowsills were included in every activity because no one had anywhere else to go. So it became important for everyone to get an equal share of whatever they were doing. They learned to think of each other as, then, one-ninth of a whole family. So if they had a cake today, they are certain to cut a piece for everyone in the family, whether they're there or not. And if they plan a trip, they check each person to see whether or not he can go. In fact, the year that Dick went to Hawaii for a rest from fighting in Vietnam, he playfully sent an invitation to everyone else in the family to join him. He was shocked with happiness when the entire Cowsill family met his Honolulu plane!
DIFFERENT LOVE
Love: Cowsill Style is different from the love in any other family, but it doesn't have to be. Just like the Cowsills did, each family can work out it's own plan for keeping peace.
Bud and Barbara didn't pound it into their children's head but the Cowsills all learned it just the same. For them, Love: Cowsill Style is where it's at!
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