A sister can make you or break you.

Mine tried to break me for many a year. Some people are fond of saying that people never change, but it’s just not true. My sister Kristi is a fine example of bad times gone good.

kudos to my mother who made our matching clothes and further tortured me with dressing me just like my inferior siblings

She’s the only sister I grew up with. I have a total of 4 other sisters and 2 brothers, but I only grew up with Kristi and Mitch, who shared a dad with each other, but not with me. I didn’t find that out until mid-childhood, so they were full-on blood as far as I was concerned. Kristi is 4 years younger than me, and I’ve found with my gremlins that 4 years difference is the magical amount of years it takes to reach maximum annoyance to your siblings.

From a very early age, we knew Kristi would be special. I don’t mean special as in, “She’s gonna change the world one day, that one!” special. When we lived in South Carolina I have very early memories of Easter morning. Kristi would have been under the age of 2, and she liked to escape. Without clothing. And run around the hood like a pale red headed streak of glory.

So naturally, when Easter came along, she deemed that very thing the appropriate way to celebrate the sacred rising of our Lord: with a streak up and down our sidewalk. Except the neighbors didn’t see the religious significance of it, and told my mother that they had seen the Easter Bunny early that morning.

That same year, when my brother was but a wee infant, I came home from school one day to find Kristi and Mitch in the bathroom. Baby Mitch was in the toilet, one leg in and one leg out and Kristi was working that flush handle for all it was worth. She was an evil one.

She became my shadow all the way down to East Texas, and that’s where she really came into her own. Those were the days I was desperately trying to shake all semblance of childhood and Kristi was cramping my style. So I let her know. Often.

But instead of telling Mom, she would get revenge. Revenge that only Kristi could think up. Revenge like telling all the high school kids at the front of the bus that we rode exactly what kind of changes puberty was doing to my body. Specific descriptions that mortify me to this day, thank-you-very-much.

I have a very clear mental picture of her little bobbed red-haired self, hand on her hip, spouting with that Texan accent all about the wonders of my ever changing prepubescent body.

And for some reason she thought revenge came in the form of calling me bad names on this tape recorder we used to tape our pseudo commercials on. When I popped that thing in to admire our dramatic skills later, I raged against how Kristi marred our professional rendering for all eternity with her foul mouth.

But now we’re grown ups. And between those days and now, there have been many other incidents that caused my oldest child blood to boil. Sometime after she got pregnant with her first, I finally started to relate to her and she to me. Then she got married and had another kid and we really dug hanging out.

Occasionally she threatens to shout to all the grocery store occupants all about my darkest secrets. But it’s only a reflex. She usually controls herself.

Truth be told, she’s the best friend I have. I’ve made some close friends through the years, and they usually move, or I move and I have to start all over. But I never have to start over with my sister. And she’s turned into the most giving, compassionate person I’ve ever met. Qualities I’m sadly lacking. I spent many a year looking down on her in annoyance; in the way only an oldest child can in that superior way. But now I admire her.

She’s so many things that I’m not. She is evidence that people do change. And no worries, she hasn’t tried to flush any infants down the toilet lately.