Saturday, April 10, 2010

The Nasty Sucker Contest: The Best of Sibling Rivalry



I'm going back to work, probably temporarily, but maybe more. My youngest sister, Tiffany has moved the furniture store location and now my father, whom she works with, is about to undergo major back surgery.

Dad's out of commission.

It's a two hour drive for me to work there. One way. I'll probably spend one night with Mom and Dad and work two consecutive days a week for a while.

I'm working for Tiffany. My youngest sister. This is so gonna suck, for more reasons than one.

The first reason is that Tiffany fires everybody. Every single person. Tiffany has no problem with the words "YOU'RE FIRED!" She's The Donald of Eastpoint, so from this point forward, I shall refer to Tiffany as The Biffy, because I've always called her Biffy and it flows better than The Tiffany...Maybe she actually fired Dad....

The second reason is that did I mention she's my little sister? Yeah, I know we're old, but that doesn't matter. The law of birth order is one we must follow, um, forever.

The Biffy has been my nemesis since the spring of 1973. I was five and a half years old when she came to spread her sunshine in our lives. She was fat, round, had jet black hair and blue eyes, all in sharp contrast to mine and Lacye's super-skinny, blonde and green eyes. She didn't match us. I was convinced she was some sort of reject because I couldn't imagine anyone actually wanting her, so of course a band of gypsies, on their caravan through Central Alabama, left her on our doorstep on that fateful spring day. And this would be the story that I fed her for years, with my sidekick Lacye agreeing, saying things like "yeah, gypsies....dirty gypsies....you're just a stupid dirty gypsy..."

The Biffy was cute, all smiley and happy.....
The Biffy was not left by gypsies.
The Biffy was Mom's favorite.
The Biffy was Dad's favorite.
The Biffy was MAMMA T'S favorite.

And this meant war. She could have those other two, but not Mamma T.

Lacye and I inflicted all sorts of horrid torment on The Biffy.

We bounced her to the moon on the trampoline.
We taught her dirty words and didn't tell her they were, um, dirty words.
We married her to a doberman in an elaborate garden ceremony and we made her wear his collar.
We stared at her without blinking once through every family dinner. For over ten years.
We licked lollipops, scrubbed them on the carpet of our mother's car floor and made her eat them. Lacye and I referred to this as The Nasty Sucker Contest because we competed to see who could make the Nastiest Sucker....
We called her "stupid" about 10,000 times over the course of our childhood.
We didn't let her ride shotgun, um....ever. The first time she saw the front seat of a car, she was driving it.

Of course for all the childhood trauma I inflicted upon her, she got me back even better when I hit adolescence.

She told Mom that I went to see Porky's instead of Chariots of Fire. Of course going into Chariots of Fire was social suicide, no self-respecting thirteen year old would've made that choice...My bff Kelli and I were looking all kinds of cool, with all the other cool kids, in line to see Porky's. We'd been anticipating the arrival of this flick for months. Every single one of us told lies to our parents, all of whom thought we were watching Chariots of Fire, playing in the other theater, but no, the cool people were in the Porky's line, including Kelli and me, which Tiffany and her little friend Amy witnessed, (on their way into Chariots of Fire....) and promptly reported this information to Mom. I was grounded for six whole weeks, a punishment that surely didn't fit the crime, especially since none of us actually watched the movie.

At the ripe old age of fifteen, I'd grown into a gangly yet slightly heavy teenager with braces. Tiffany was nine years old and Star Wars was the rage. Tiffany could do the "Yoda Voice" better than Yoda himself. She dressed herself in some sort of toga looking getup when she was en Yoda.

Given my less than stellar looks and the fact that Tiffany sat Indian Style at the foot of our driveway steps and made my boyfriend, who was cute and I wasn't qualified to have, fill out an application to enter our home, all in Yoda Voice and Toga, then she slipped the application into a box (with all the other applications, ummm....not).

I looked out the window and saw him talking to her, I saw the toga. Humiliation does not get much worse than that. He began to fill out the paper on his knee. She submitted the completed form into a slit she'd cut in the top of the box. Yoda en Toga granted him entrance. "You may enter now..."

It's amazing I ever got a second date.

So the next year when I started driving, I'd blast her eardrums out with incredibly awesome 80's music all the way to school.

This was a very long ride for The Biffy until she figured out that she could pin me to the steering wheel with her legs locked against the back of my seat...so....while driving.....pinned against the steering wheel, Loverboy cassette on highest volume, (she likes her tapes on ten...) and I am beating the crap out of her locked legs with my right fist.

Yeah, that's right, driving down the road. When we moved to Florida, we were doing this on bridges.

With habits like that, who needed texting?

So, here I am, about to go to work for Tiffany.

After she gets me down to minimum wage and works me like a mule, how long do you think it'll be until I hear the words...

"YOU'RE FIRED!"

But trust me, that won't be the end of it.....she may win this battle, but I'm still in the war.

I'd love to hear stories of your sibling torment, I know we weren't the only ones....and remarkably, as adults, all three of us get along, with only a slight amount of, ummm....drama.

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