Not many people -- especially my friends -- believe this, but I used to be a sweet kid. No, seriously. I was a nice little kid -- polite, kind. I never cried or fussed. Sure, I had a mop top and a predilection towards Michael Jackson albums, but otherwise, wonderful.
That lasted about two and a half years, until my sister, Kate, was born and my idyllic life ended.
My earliest memories all deal with being, in some way, a shit to my sister. When we took her home from the hospital, I announced to my parents that I believed it was time to take her back to her real parents. (When I was two years old, I was saying things funnier than anything I've ever written in this column. Fuck.) When she cried, I would shove her pacifier into her mouth as hard as possible. Somehow, that never quite seemed to work.
But once she was old enough to walk and talk, it was Kate who was the troublemaker. Born with the firm belief that if she saw it, it was hers, and that if she wanted it, it was hers and with a redhead's temper, Kate started fights with me about just about everything. Mostly, it was about what TV show we would watch. I'm not a violent person normally, but everyone has their breaking point. Mine was Full House.
I'd like to say that Kate and I stopped fighting because we became mature and grew to understand each other. But the truth is, when I was 12, she scratched me and made me bleed, so I threw her across my parents' bedroom. It was the first time I showed I could really hurt her. She wised up after that.
As we got older, Kate became more willing to admit that I could possibly be cooler than she thought. This was around the time that I got a driver's license, but I'm pretty sure that's a coincidence.
But Kate and I never became really close until I left for college. Maybe it was her being stuck in the house with our parents, maybe absence actually does make the heart grow fonder, but we talk on the phone now. We complain about the lack of a Baltimore Ravens passing game together, we gossip about our former school. I show her pictures on thefacebook.com of girls I'm hoping to, er, date, and she tells me, a little doubting, that if I can "pull that," she'll be "impressed."
We're still very different people, Kate and I. She plays lacrosse and is a total WASP-wannabe, I sit on my ass and am a self-hating Jew. She wears Lily Pulitzer, I don't do laundry. But, hell, I'm almost ready to admit I don't mind having her around.
-Alex Koppelman
