My Hero

My sister doesn't read my blog. She just can't sit still long enough to bother. My parents don't read it either. They don't have a computer. Last year I wrote a lot of posts about traveling with my family and I compiled them into a self-published vanity book to give to my parents for Christmas. I gave my sister a copy, too. She can't bother to sit in front of the computer, but I figured it might be a good bathroom book. Everyone's got to sit sometimes.

My parents have shared that little volume with many of their friends. My sister liked it so much she read it 'in one sitting'. Interpret that as you like. Her major complaint, though, was that she wasn't featured enough, "There wasn't enough about ME!"

It's true, I don't write much about her. That has been a conscious decision. I felt that I was respecting her privacy. Turns out I was hurting her feelings. She mentioned last week, over a couple few beers, an incident that had occurred at the pizza shop where we both worked. She said, almost excitedly, "I bet you blogged about THAT!" I hadn't. Wanna hear it?

We had live music pretty regularly at the pizza shop. The owners were a husband/wife team and the husband took more interest in the music. He always let the performers eat and drink free. Most had a slice or two and a couple beers. One guy drank top shelf whiskey all night. It wasn't quite fair, but an equitable solution had yet to be worked out. On one particular evening, the husband wasn't there and the whiskey-drinking performer was. I poured him a drink and handed it to him, as I always did. "You didn't ring that up!" said my boss in her usual acerbic tone.

"It was for the performer."

"And?"

"And your husband always lets the performers drink..."

(In real life, of course, I referred to them by their names and not by their functions. But while my sister has cleared me to talk about her, these three folks have not done the same. It makes the conversation sound stilted, but it was easier for me to relate it this way than to make up names.)

"That's why we are always fucking struggling!" she screamed at me as the bar and restaurant filled up. She was super-classy like that. "Ring up his goddamn drinks! ALL of them!"

I am so non-confrontational. I did as I was told. It felt very wrong - especially since she hadn't informed him - but I did it.

At the end of the night I presented him with his tab. It was hefty. It was, actually, more than he earned for playing that night. He was a little taken aback. And more than a little drunk. He yelled at me. He accused me of padding his bill. He - and I'm really not proud of this part - made me cry.

As he went about tearing down the stage and I went about closing up the shop, my sister came in - more than a little drunk herself. "Why are you crying?" she asked. I braced myself for her to tease me. It would have been in character. But she didn't. As I told her what happened, I watched her morph from lovable happy drunk to volatile angry drunk in seconds flat. As she turned to confront him, I begged her not to. Two drunks fighting about me was not something I needed at that point at all. I just wanted to go home and put the night behind me. But there was no stopping her.

She stepped up onto the stage, poked him to get his attention, and pointed at me. "YOU made MY SISTER cry."

He shrugged and turned to avoid her. He was still stinging from the bill and he just wanted to get out of there fast. But like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, my sister would not be ignored. She cornered him and said, "Who are YOU to make MY SISTER cry?"

He tried again - unsuccessfully - to dodge her.

"My sister is SMART! She has more degrees than you can IMAGINE! She's FUNNY! She's way TOO NICE for her own good! She's TOO GOOD for this place! She was only doing what she was TOLD and you had NO RIGHT to make her cry!" Each of the capitalized words was punctuated by a finger poke to his chest. "That's who SHE is - who are YOU?" It was rhetorical. She didn't give him a chance to answer before the poke fest continued. "YOU? Are a BIG FAT PIECE of WIENER!"

Out of the mouths of drunks. When I relayed the story to her the next day, she said, "I called him a WHAT?"

"A big fat piece of wiener."

"What did I even mean by that?"

"You said it, not me..."

"And I got right in his face?"

"Poked his chest repeatedly."

"He's - like - really tall."

"Yeah - but he's totally old."

"Not to mention drunk."

"Not to mention a big fat piece of wiener."

Don't screw with me, people. My sister's got my back. And a black belt. And not even a tiny bit of fear or restraint. Plus, I don't even like to think about what she might call you if you hurt me.