Today is my little sister’s birthday. I was three when she was born and did not appreciate ceding my position in the household to the interloper. Somewhere I have a Super-8 movie that shows me holding her when she came home from the hospital. One of my hands is balled into a fist and I’m aiming it threateningly at the baby’s face.
As we got older, the fighting intensified. I still have some scattered scars on one arm from her fingernails. Eventually we developed an extremely elaborate system of blackmail that kept the tattling and fighting to a bare minimum, although the occasional battle still broke out over unauthorized borrowing of clothes well into our high school years.
Then a funny thing happened when we grew up and moved out on our own: we became good friends.
We discovered that we had more in common than we thought, and after a while we figured out that we travel well together, so we started taking fun trips. One of my favorites was the vacation to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina where we drank rum drinks, visited every single Ripley’s Believe It or Not attraction in town (there were at least three), went to an alligator park and the House of Blues, and basically had a good old touristy time – none of which was planned in advance.
My sister constantly impresses me with the things she manages to accomplish. She’s a shrewd businesswoman, a great mom, a creative thinker, a loyal friend, and a lot of fun to be around.
Happy Birthday, Chick-O-Stick!
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