She Can Cry If She Wants To

Today is my sister's birthday, she's 17 and probably way cooler than I'll ever be. I gave her a cinnamon bun from Cob's Bakery and told her the rest would be coming later; yeah, I kind of suck.

She recently got back from her trip to Juarez, Mexico where she spent her time building a playground for the local communities. She's quite the humanitarian considering most other kids spent their spring break getting wasted. She's pretty awesome like that, AND her legs almost go up to her armpits (I'm a bit jealous). I asked her about how the trip went, if she enjoyed it, etc, and as always she was so chill and collected about everything.

"Meh, I got sick, probably the sickest I've ever been in my entire life. I was violently puking for 12 hours, I couldn't even do anything for three days, then I fainted on the pavement. I woke up and didn't know why I was on the ground. I just sorta got up and was like, alright."

Where as I would've turned that story into a "I WAS F'N SAVAGELY PUKING WITH A VEHEMENCE UNEQUALED BY ANYONE EVER IN HISTORY," hers conjured up little passionate anger or bitterness. She can be so nonchalant about the very things in life that make me freak out, and as I understand, this is just what cool people do. Sometimes I want to poke her in the eye with a fork so that she'll react in a way other than the unperturbed manner that she seems to handle everything with. Alas, I never actually inflict danger upon her, and she continues to be so damn tranquil.



She told me that through going to a particularly impoverished part of Mexico, she learned to stop worrying so much about trivial things such as homework. I thought that was pretty mature of her to reassess her life after a pretty big experience. She had decided not to do any of her homework this weekend because she was just too worn out and tired of wasting her life on differential math equations. She was really starting to impress me with her change of perspective on life, school, and general priorities. Then she confessed to me that she was getting a hernia from avoiding her homework for the first time ever. Alright, so she is human.

I have an evocative memory of my sister at the age of about 4 or 5, that still makes me laugh to this day. We were on the one and only family bike ride in my entire life (a personal dream of my 6 year old self), and I was marveling at the luck I had finally stumbled upon. Basking in the late afternoon sunlight, we journeyed on sidewalks and pathways like the jovial team that we were; I could've rode until my legs fell off, I was just that happy. We made it approximately 200 meters from our house when my mom said we had to go back. WHAT? WHY? THIS IS PURE EUPHORIA AND YOU WANT TO RIP IT FROM MY CUTE DIMPLED HANDS?! Yes she said, unfortunately there had been a little accident. I shot my glance over to my sister and there it was, the big fat pee stain on her pants that single handedly shattered my fragile elation. Of all the frequent times that she couldn't hold it in, she had to choose the would be pivotal day of my life to piss on. I was livid, she was oblivious, just riding around like nothing had happened with the ninja-turtle helmut rattling on her tiny head. I've since gotten over the traumatic experience, and sometimes I even let her talk to me.

In many ways, the bike ride sums up who my sister is, and what she's all about. No, urine doesn't epitomize her, but trucking on regardless of the bumps in the road, being cool when catastrophe strikes, she eats that shit for breakfast.