Christina Leaf
Have you ever been so mad at someone that you wanted to kill him? If you answered yes, I would guess that you have a sibling. I have a sister that is a year and a half younger than I am. Courtney and I went to a small Christian school and were often in the same classes.
We also shared a room when we were younger. Our parents would order us to go clean our room. While I would get busy cleaning, Courtney would plop down in the middle of the floor to direct my efforts. I was not happy with this arrangement. In fact, I would yell at her until I got mad, and then I would go kick her. She would start crying, and we would get in trouble, again. Since this happened every time we were to clean our room, our parents decided that we needed separate rooms.
My mother also had to punish us for fighting during naptime. One time, Courtney even managed to knock out one of my baby teeth when we were playing tug-of-war with a sheet. In spite of our constant fighting, my mother told us over and over again that we would be very close as we got older. But Courtney and I refused to believe her.
I began to feel closer to her, however, when I was in eighth grade. We still fought often (to my mother’s chagrin), but we did not fight in front of anyone but family. In fact, Courtney began to protect me. One example of her protectiveness happened at school. I had few friends, and kids picked on me. But my sister, once she hit junior high, became very popular. I noticed that people did not pick on me as much as they had the year before. I wondered why since I had not changed until I caught her glaring at someone who was making fun of me. She seemed to have the attitude that she could pick on me as much as she wanted to—but no one else better try it while she was around.
I saw her protectiveness again later that same year. For a basketball game, my team did not have enough players. So, my coach (also my father) recruited Courtney. Although it was the only game that she played with us, we almost won for the first time that season.
In that game, the opposing team had some of my teammates from another team on it. I had played with them for two years, and they knew that I had a bad knee. Unfortunately. Those girls purposely threw my bad knee into a wall.
My sister got upset.
When Courtney gets upset on the basketball court, she does not start fouling; she gets intense. She was at least a year younger than the girls who had hurt me and should have been less skilled, but she started driving the ball, shooting free throws, and inspiring the rest of my team. She even managed to get both girls to foul out of the game. In fact, if there had been one minute more on the clock, my team might have won the game.
On another basketball team that year, the coach could not tell the two of us apart. This did not make sense to us. We look very different, play different positions on the court, and have different personalities. We did not even hang out with the same people. One game, our coach forgot to put me in the game. Courtney went up to her after the game and complained. When the coach said that she had put me in, Courtney got out the scorebook and proved to her that I had never gone in. I would never have brought it up, but my sister got angry on my behalf.
As we grew older, my sister’s protectiveness began to increase. In tenth grade, the last of my few friends at school graduated or moved away. I no longer had anyone to eat lunch with. Courtney brought over her group to sit with me. Although none of the people she was friends with became my good friends, I did not have to eat alone because of her intervention.
We now go to different colleges and are leading different lives. I am an English major, and she is an architectural engineering major. Although we are headed in different directions, I know that we will remain close friends as well as sisters.
In fact, we don’t even fight much anymore. I haven’t wanted to kill her for weeks.
