Oh sister!

I have a kid sister.
She may be 6' 2'' but she is still the youngest, the baby.
Yes, she is my little sister.

Since infancy, she's had a way about her - a determination and proclivity to be wreckless, wild and live with astonishing abandon. As a baby, they defined her refusal to be calm or quiet as cholic. Then, as a toddler she set into disregarding the constructs and tradition of bed time. Regularly, we would find Sister sprawled out on the sofa in the morning with juice boxes strewn about and Barney or KidSongs VHS cassettes jutting from the VCR.

Occasionally a family member making a 3 a.m. run to the restroom would spot her there on the sofa engrossed and delighting in children's programming. She was left uninterrupted. It was her way.


During the elementary years, her school attendance became an issue. Sister forfeited as many school days as possible. One night I found a letter on the dining room table. It read:

Please, don't wake me up!

I am not planning to go to school today!

I woke up earlier (around 4:12) feeling very sick! So leave me B! PLEASE!

I'll go tomorrow. 

This note may have worked if I wasn't home from college to discover her proposal. It was about midnight when I spotted the decree, and showed it to my mother. Sister was 10 at the time.

Mother mastered the art of parent-teacher negotiations and streamlined the process of completing science fair projects - whatever it took to get Sister to the next semester, grade level, milestone. There were moments of promise. Once, Sister did take up basketball as an extracurricular. But during practice she asked the coach to be excused to drink some water. That was the last he saw of Sister.

Sister is 19 now, she's graduated from high school but her determination has not diminished. It's currently focused on doing precisely what makes her feel good instead of anything that will make her better. To my knowledge, her days are spent sleeping and the nights are full of shenanigans, i.e street fights, shoplifting, parties. If you ask her what she's doing with herself she will accurately tell you "Nothing." I wonder if that will ever will change.