Sister Acts

My sister drawing

My sister pretending to be as fabulous as me

My sister is going to kill me for mentioning what she was like as a kid.  I’m planning my own death as we speak.  But it’s so funny because every time we went on vacation she would get deathly ill.  I mean once we had to go to the hospital when we went to Sue Saint Marie and she cried her eyes out because of extreme pain in her stomach.  We got her some tests and were worried sick.  We thought she had something like appendicitis.  Then of course we would found out it was just constipation.

She will claim that I spit on her when we were walking home from school as kids.  I will neither confirm nor deny that accusation, all I can say is: she was a brat.  She would cry so hard on the way home from school the neighbors thought my friends and I were beating her or something.  I mean I loved her to death, I would cry along with her when she was constipated.  But generally she had this habit of crying all the time.

One time when she was little she actually laid in the middle of the road of our subdivision and started wailing her eyes out.  I dragged her inside, I mean literally dragged her home by her hair like some cave woman.  She had scratches on her but she would not get up and I could not pick her up.  Then I got in trouble for being bad.  

We would have these scratching, pulling our hair fights, it was crazy.  I may or may not have pushed her off the couch and caused her to break her arm when she was like five.  In my defense I didn’t know her arm was that sensitive.  I think it was an accident, OK?  It’s not like a planned on committing assault. 

I remember little things she did as a kid.  Like she would randomly get up in the middle of the night and put toothpaste on the bathroom walls.  There was no reason to do that.  My parents and I confronted her about it once when we tried to have an intervention and catch her doing it in the middle of the night.  She just started giggling.  That’s weird right?

I mean I’m not the only weirdo in this family.

One time my mom came in the living room and noticed that there was some blood on my sister’s neck when she was about five years old.  She looked closely at her and OMG she broke a bunch of tiny decorative glass bottles and put them down her shirt.  God only knows why.  My mom started crying but my sister was laughing the whole time.  We had to clean up her wounds and she cried as the alcohol stung.

Again she cried a lot as a kid.  That was her way.  I hated it.  But I was the only one who I allowed to make her cry.  Once some kids were making fun of her on the bus and she came home crying.  I went in my room and cried.  I never told her that.

When we went to summer camps she would just start crying and some fool would pick her up and she would tell her what a bad sister I was and how mean I was to her.  That makes me feel kind of bad.  I mean I didn’t mean to be a bad older sister as a child, I was just a stupid kid. 

I mean we did a lot of things together, although I didn’t let her play with me and my friends.  Especially when my best friend and I started a band.  Yes we did.  We used tennis rackets as guitars and started writing and singing songs.  Oh you better believe it.  I actually still could not sing anything but I can still remember one of the songs that we sang.  I wrote it myself:  “I’m gonna let him know, let him know…that my love for him is true.  I know he’ll love me too.”   I kid you not, those were the words of the song.  I kid you not we pretended our tennis rackets were guitars.  We sang so badly out of tune on my porch and my sister clapped and told us we were great.

I didn’t let my sister be part of the band.

I never wanted her to play with my friends and I.  I mean she was adorable, but I never noticed that.  I saw her for her true colors, which were based on the fact that she was my annoying little sister.

The irony:  she’s waaay cooler than me now.  I’m serious I want to play with her friends now.

But we did some stuff together, like we would watch “The Breakfast Club” and “Sixteen Candles” over and over again and it never got old.  She was the only one who understood my obsession with certain T.V. shows like “21-Jump Street.”  She watched the reruns as I taped them and watched the show over and over again.  That was my life in the eighties.  Johnny Depp was my first love.

Now the both of us watch “Sex in the City” reruns over and over again and analyze our own lives. 

I think I may have scarred my beautiful sister when we were kids, and this is my formal apology.  As you can see in the picture I may have always been a bit of a ham, but she was always the wind beneath my wings.  Seriously.

But now we are true blue sisters.  We watch out for each other.  We shop together and talk about men together.  We don’t tell each other everything, but we tell each other enough.  We are not exactly the Kardashian sisters but we are better I think because we see each other for who we really are. 

Some people say blood is thicker than water but I don’t just care about my sister because she is related to me, but because she can relate to me. 

Now my sister is an extremely put together brilliant and kind woman.  I’m done spitting on her and pushing her off the metaphorical couch.  I look up to her and she is younger than me.  I think she secretly thinks she is now my older sister, but I retain authority over that title.  She’s still my little sis.   

I love her.  I probably don’t tell her that enough.

nina