Lies I'd Tell My Sister

There's something you should all know about me, if you don't know me.  Or rather, if you do know me and don't know this already, you're probably going to question everything I've ever said to you that may have seem bizarre.

Bizarre? No.  It can't be true.

While I'm not by any means dishonest, I do like to play pranks on people.  The good news is, I tend to surround myself with people who can give it back to me as much as I can dish it out.  Essentially, no good prank goes unpunished (and so it should be).

This interest in pulling peoples' legs is not a learned trait.  I'm convinced I have a genotype that forces me to act on impulses to pull a fast one on people.  The skill itself has many elements of learning, but the desire is innate.  And who was my first victim? My sister, Sara.

My sister is two and a half years younger than me.  She's very intelligent, worldly, wonderful person.  And while she is still gorgeous nowadays (d'uh, she's related to me), she was cuter than I was when I was her age.

My sister is cuter than me, and she's wailing.

As if a photo of my cute little sister wasn't enough, she also had an utterly adorable speech problem, and some funny favorite unusual phrases.  Here are a few examples:

"Lellow yeggings" for yellow leggings.

"IAYA STINK!!!" (which I presume meant, "I stink", although I don't know why she said that*)

"More diamonds gweez" ("More diamonds, please").

Yes, my sister mispronounced "please" as "gweez".  See? Sickeningly cute.

So I couldn't make fun of her brains (because she is smart), and I couldn't make fun of her looks (because she was cute), and I couldn't even make fun of how she talked, because I wanted to talk like that, but I sounded totally ridiculous when I tried.  So what was left?

Lies.

Lies to tell my sweet, cute sister.

See that baby on the left? COULD SHE GET ANY MORE ADORABLE?!

I don't remember all of them, although if you spent any time at all with my sister you'd probably hear a few examples.  She recalls them well, which makes sense since I'm sure at this point in her life, she'd require therapy and/or nuclear warfare to wipe them from her memory.

One of the lies I'd often tell my sister was that there were dead men in various parts of our house.  It worked well, because I could find virtually any part of our suburban home to imagine dead men.   From whence did this idea spring?  You can thank my dear father for this, because he once mentioned the phrase, "…had a skeleton in the closet".  Despite the lengthy explanation of this colloquial expression, my seven year old mind only pictured a skeleton sitting in a closet, which seemed cool and useful.

Oh hey, Sara! 

Hence, as my sister sat at the kitchen table, I blurted out, "WATCH OUT SARA.  IF YOU DON'T FINISH YOUR DINNER, THE SKELETON IN THE DISHWASHER WILL GET YOU."

Or, when my sister tried to sleep in our room but I wasn't done talking**, I'd force her awake with, "Hey Sara, there's a dead man in your bed."

At this point, anyone who is an older sibling is probably nodding their head along while they read this blog, thinking, "You know, I've got a couple of stories like that."  And the younger siblings are uniting now, gathering their forces to take down the Siblings Elder Front.   "How could she DO that?!" they say!  And for the rest of you, the Only-Child clan, you sit on the fence (but I implore you to see my perspective).  Well, if you think I'm a bad sister now, wait until you read the rest of this.

Yes.

The absolute best lie I told my sister is still something brought up at holiday dinners.  It's not that I'm proud to have tortured Sara by any means.  But nowadays it's hilarious how obnoxious I was, and that Sara didn't murder me in my sleep (and then say, "HA! THERE'S A DEAD CAT IN YOUR BED!")

One day, 6 year old Cat decided to tell 3.5 year old Sara the following:

It is hereby declared illegal for one's dentition to contact any substance in liquid form.

Yes, I told Sara that she would get arrested if she get her teeth wet.

Bwahahahaha!

No! She did not believe me at first.  But thanks to my lack of solid ethics (you know, only being six years old and all) and Sara's even younger age, it didn't take long to convince her that yes, her older sister knew U.S. legislation better than she.  And that yes, she must keep her teeth from contacting any liquid (with the exception, I presume now, of saliva).

And so my sister spent the day carefully figuring out methods of drinking juice boxes and glasses of milk and water sans teeth-wettage.

By the time my father returned home from work***, my sister sat in tears of fear and frustration on the steps in our garage.  She had attempted to drink a glass of (something? could've been gin at this point in the story) with a straw halfway down her gullet.   Alas, she had gotten her teeth wet.  She wept as she thought about the inevitable arrest.

Dad: Sara? What's wrong? Why are you crying?
Sara: I GOT MY TEETH WET AND NOW I'M GONNA BE ARRESTEDDDDDD
Dad: What?! Who told you that?
Sara: Cat!

My dad probably punished me, and rightly so.  Because I never told a lie of that caliber to Sara afterwards.  But the relationship between my sister and me was volatile and wonderful at the same time.  We had a lot of fun together, we had a lot of fights together.  She accepts me for the crazy person I am, and I have since stopped playing jokes on her.  She's earned the reprieve.

But don't go feeling too bad for her.  She had her own way of getting me.

Why don't I remember what happened after my dad found out the awful thing I told Sara?  Because several months later Sara got her revenge by clocking me in the face with a wooden baseball bat.

End scene.
__________
* My sense of smell doesn't often produce normal neural results; once, I thought a flat of capelin smelled like the inside of a pumpkin.  So it is well within the realm of reason that my sister was malodorous.

** Am I ever done?

*** There might've been a dead Cat had my mom gotten home from work first and saw this.