When you grow up with a large number of siblings like I did, you have difficulty trusting people. That’s just the nature of a big household, especially when you are the youngest.

Sure, you have a great support system, but while one of them is helping you, another might be lurking around the corner waiting to deliver a wedgie. Then there’s the laundry chute from the main floor of the house to the basement which you had to use with one eye peeled on the hallway lest someone try to push you down it.

I have gotten over many of these problems as the years have passed. I’m still a little flinchy and suffer more jokes than anyone else in the family, but I have long learned how to deal with those things.

At least I did until my sister threw a party this summer to celebrate her son’s engagement.

We headed down to this shindig in the same attire we wear for most any family event – jeans and casual shirts. Nothing on the invitation indicated we needed to get all fancy.

But when we arrived, we noticed my nephew, his fiancé and all their friends had a different idea. The guys had on shirts and ties. The girls wore nice dresses. Even though my sister told me that no one cared how we looked, I still felt like a hobo.

We didn’t look that bad, just not as nice as the younger crowd. Once I took my baseball hat off, we blended in pretty well and had a very nice time. However, we headed home without doing one very important thing – retrieving my hat.

I don’t know why I wore a hat that night. Maybe Bridget and I spent the day at the pool. Maybe I just felt like it. All I know is that I wore and then left behind the Lucky Charms baseball hat I treasured.

A friend who works in food service gave me the hat because she gets a lot of free things from vendors. I don’t wear a hat as much as I did 20 years ago, but I really liked this one. It fit well and looked cool.

I barely gave the missing hat a thought until I left my overcoat at one of my other sister’s house earlier this month. Do you see a trend here? There’s a reason my mother used to attach my mittens to my jacket as a kid.

I logged onto Facebook a couple days after forgetting the jacket and saw a picture of my brother – who lives around the corner from the sister who has Lucky Charms – in the snow. He was wearing my hat.

Then a picture of my nephew’s fiancé showed up online this week. She’s in Vegas with some friends … and Lucky Charms went along for the trip. My hat in Vegas without me. That’s just mean.

So all the work I did to develop trust in my siblings has gone completely down the tubes because my sister has decided to turn my favorite hat into her version of Flat Stanley.

After this column was submitted to the newspaper, Lucky Charms was returned to his rightful place. I picked him up Sunday. Oh, and it was all my nephew’s idea.