In honor of National Siblings Day next month, I’m going to tell you about my sister, Erin.
One day, my sister shoved a hummingbird egg up my nose.
I was probably six years old, and she was nine. We were on a road trip to St. George. Hummingbird eggs were a type of jelly bean. They were small, and shaped like a disk.
This was around the time when she convinced me that lying on the floor of the back seat was so much better than sitting on an actual seat.
I was gullible. I’ll admit it.
This wasn’t the first time my sister had pulled the wool over my eyes. We routinely got ice cream at a place on 3300 South. She would say, “Let’s have a contest and see who can eat their ice cream the fastest!”
I would shove it into my mouth as fast as possible, so fast that it wasn’t even tasty anymore. And then I would win.
And with her full bowl of ice cream, she would say, “Congratulations. You win.” Then she would lick her spoon in an exaggerated manner, because she had so much ice cream, and I had none.
Just like Charlie Brown and Lucy with the football, I fell for it every time.
I should’ve known from the beginning how things were going to go. Apparently, upon hearing the news that my mother had given birth to me, she (as a toddler) went outside and peed on the porch. A most inauspicious beginning to sisterhood.
As a pre-teen, she would sing that song from Madness called “Our House.”
The lyrics were originally:
Our house, in the middle of our street
Our house, in the middle of our street…
But she would change the lyrics to:
My sister… in the middle of the street.
A car… came and ran over her feet.
She lay… splattered all over the street.
She got… amputation of the feet.
One time, after she’d recently returned from a church mission, she gave one of my favorite shirts to one of her friends. When I complained, she said, “I guess you don’t know what it’s like to be Christlike and charitable.”
I said, “How does giving away my clothes somehow make you charitable?”
Still, as sisters go, I could’ve had it much worse. After all, Cleopatra’s sister, Arsinoe, was seen as a threat. So Cleopatra had her poisoned, as sisters tend to do when they feel threatened. (Did you know there’s a word for this? It’s “sororicide.”)
That left Cleopatra alone to rule Egypt and then get bitten by an asp.
My sister never went as far as to poison me. At least, I don’t think she did. Maybe I can only take her at her word.
No, her modus operandi involved getting bored on a road trip, and shoving a hummingbird egg up her sister’s nose.
I tried to get the thing out, with details that I will leave to the imagination. But the darn jelly bean was stuck.
My mom started to get suspicious.
“Girls, what’s going on back there?”
My sister gave me a tissue. “Shhhh. Don’t tell mom. Now blow! Like your brain depends on it!”
We got it out, and my mom was none the wiser until some time later. But you’d think that would be a rule that didn’t require mentioning: Don’t shove things up your sister’s nose.
Even so, I didn’t want her to get in trouble. Because everyone knows the first rule of sisterhood is I can mess with my sister, but if you mess with her, the gloves come off.
So, here’s to Erin. Sisters by chance. And now friends by choice. Despite a history of nasal jelly beans.
Brodi Ashton is a New York Times best-selling author who lives in the Salt Lake City area. She’s also an occasional columnist for The Salt Lake Tribune.
