i tried so hard to stay in merediths good graces , an effort which had been failing with a regularity that frightened me ever since meredith received that girdle ( a segmented monstrosity a bit like an albino trilobite wrapped in a flat box with tissue paper and attached snaps for nylons ) for her twelve birthday , and it went to her head and six months later turned her into someone who regularly used dippity-doo to set her hair on orange juice cans and had left her little sister behind .