Promise made, promise kept

So a week or so ago my youngest sister (who, having learned my method of avoiding choosing a favorite sibling, referred to herself as “your favorite almost-19-year-old sister”) extracted a promise from me that in exchange for baked goods that were to be shipped to me, I would dedicate a post to her. The moment of weakness seems even more absurd when the promised goods never materialized. I will, however, uphold my end of the deal if for no other reason than to make her feel guilty and possibly forget all those times I didn’t come through for her in the past.

Growing up I was a very solitary person, in the sense that most of my enjoyable activities were one-person things: reading, watching television, video games, drawing, and all of those all over again. That suited an introvert quite well, though, so it was never troublesome for me. As the years went by, though, various people started letting me know in different ways that even if social activities were things I needed to build energy to face, I did need to experience them. Parents trying to get me out with friends, or sometimes just to get me friends; random classmates, likely feeling guilty for usually only talking to me to ask for homework help, periodically asking me to spend time with them and their friends; the obligatory school social events that everyone was expected to attend; all of these started to let me know that maybe I should learn how to get along with people. Yet for all that these people taught me to identify the skills I needed, they didn’t teach me how to obtain them.

The first person to pierce the bubble was my littlest sister. In what has to be the most damning indictment of my childhood, this started with her watching me play my video games. She would come in and sit on the floor or climb on my (usually unmade) bed and we’d prop our feet up on my chair, and we would sit for a few hours as I tried to beat a game and she would basically cheer for me. At first I figured she was bored, that she needed something to do; watching the games had to be somewhat fun for a young child. Maybe at first that was true, but with the added “wisdom” of a decade for hindsight to clarify I can’t help but think that the real fun came from sneaking around the defenses of this confusing creature, the older brother.

The better a person knows and trusts another person, the more relaxed the person is around them. We all have multiple levels around which we construct our public persona, and that public persona may not correspond at all with the inner person. One of the things I envy most in a handful of my extroverted friends is the ability to drop their guard with anyone; I have never had that and am coming to grips with the fact that I never will. And even though as that awkward teenager I already had walls built, I didn’t feel threatened while playing a game in my room, even if this strange person was in there with me. And because of that, though my attention was divided, my sister got a better view of who I am (or at least was at the time, if that has changed) than almost anyone else.

But even having learned how great it can be to get to know someone that well, I got the better end of the deal. The walls were and are still there, but the more you leave them behind the easier it gets, and in spending time with my sister I learned what it was to have a good friend. More importantly, since she was a family member, I learned that friends will fight and be angry with each other, and perhaps feel sad or embarrassed because of each other (I’m guessing I embarrassed her more than the other way), but that need not end a friendship. And I learned (from both her and my other sister) that not even girls can understand other girls, so I should stop trying--useful knowledge.

Though it was initially just the games, eventually she would spend more time around me. We’d swim and play in the pool together. We’d fake wrestle at the top of the stairs (yes, we had to choose the most dangerous place; it was more convenient, being right outside our rooms) and wait for the dogs to run up and jump in the mix before we both devolved in laughter and resigned ourselves to have dogs lick our face for a few minutes. When I could drive, I would take her around town, especially during summer to head out and get snow cones. In time, I would find other friends. I grew into the pretentious teenager phase and started drifting away, then I grew out of that into the pretentious college student phase and the drifting continued, then I grew into the pretentious graduate student phase and I have no idea when that will end. But in spite of that, or perhaps because of that drifting and not getting to see her as much anymore, I still get the ridiculously goofy grin when I first see her, and it grows even bigger when I surprise her and get to see her recognize me and go from usual to excited to see me in about a second flat.

One of the moments in my life of which I am most proud was when, as a junior high school student, my sister had finally started whatever fake version of dating takes place around that age. She was cute and somewhat popular and probably could have had her pick of the school. But she had chosen the kind of goofy smart kid in the class, and she told me he reminded her of me. That didn’t last, and no one would have expected it to have lasted. And maybe one of the reasons it didn’t last was because he wasn’t good enough for her (he wasn’t, though admittedly I am biased against everyone on this matter). But I can’t think for too long about that without thinking of a shy boy about that age who hadn’t deserved his littlest sister’s affection either.