Page 30 - Contrast1988Spring

My Sis And I

How we ever reached the point we are at now is still a
wonder to me. Four years apart. My mother had insis~ed on
this age difference because Dr. Spock had suggested this to be
the ideal age variation for siblings. If Dr. Spock had
suggested that feeding children dirt was a good idea, my
mother would have done it. But even with this supposedly
ideal arrangement, the road to true sisterhood was anything but
a smooth ride for us.

The only solid memories of the first few years of us
together are recorded in the now-yellowing photographs taped
to the brittle pages of my mother's scrapbooks. They s~ow
wonderful scenes of a loving older sister, holding, playing
with, and caring for, an adoring younger child. I often
wondered what extreme measures my mother must have taken
to construct this scene for the fraction of second needed to
snap the Polaroid and pray that the flash had gone off before
my teeth had sunk into my sister's arm. Even then I was a
tomboy (my mother's polite term for brute), and ladylike
mannerisms were not my specialty.

To be quite honest, almost all of the memories I have of
my sister and I growing up together are sparked with violence.
The reason behind this was our mutual love for fighting. At
school we were both quiet, friendly, reserved, and always
looked forward to a rousing brawl by the time we reached
home in order to vent our pent-up frustrations (provided that
each other, and could turn the most trivial events into a cause
for ba~tle. Remote control possession, who was staring at
who first, and Who got to play with the Barbie with the black
hair stick out in my memory as three of the top reasons for
warfare throughout my primary school years. These were my
personal glory days of fighting. At that time, I was still much
bigger than my sister and victory had come easily with one
SWIftkick, or one sharp pinch. But this was soon to change.

As I entered high school our fighting began to revolve
around more mature themes such as who aot to use the phone
or take a shower first. I wo~ld now be a r~h individual if I
had received a dime for every shower or phone call that could

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Contrast Spring 1988