Why my sister and I have mutual respect

  I was waiting in line the other day and couldn't help but overhear (she was talking very loudly) a lady talking about her sister, about how she was such a pain and never did anything for anybody and so forth and so on.

I immediately remembered that I hadn't rung my sister for some time. I had emailed her ( to tell her about the blog) and we get updates from Facebook, but I hadn't rung.

That aside I also remembered why I had a great relationship with my sister = Mutual respect.

This didn't occur right from the start. No way. This had to be earned because we, like large numbers of young siblings, were at odds with each other to begin with. I would play jokes on her constantly and she would niggle me and we would find new ways to annoy each other and around and around it went.

It got to the point that other people would say to us when we were out with my parents, " Are you two being nice to each other yet?"

Anyway,  mutual respect was finally reached after "The Piano lesson" incident. It went down something like this........

Image courtesy of  garybabb.net

Grandma on the Go was a night Charge Sister for intensive care at the hospital and slept during the day, so we had to come home from school ourselves and on Wednesdays go to our piano lessons around the corner. We were allowed to ride our bikes there and back on the footpath.

SO, after my lesson I thought it would be funny if I let my sisters bike tyre down a little while she was having her lesson and she would have to walk home.

I let a little air out and checked, "nah not enough",  let a lot more out , "whoa OK that's pretty flat".

Off I rode.

When she finally did arrive home and found out that it was I who caused the walk home and worse, continued to laugh at her about it, a dark rage came over her.

She picked up a screwdriver that I had been using on my bike and threw it in a frustrated swoop. As she flung the screwdriver at me I tried to dodge it only to have the bladed end hit me fair square in the fleshy part of my elbow.

And the blood began to flow. As we apologized to each other over and over again, we still  had to decide what we were going to do :

1) Wake up Grandma on the Go and risk the wrath consequences of a sleep deprived mother
2) Cover up the crime and deny the blood was our doing/fault

So number 2 it was then . We hid my jeans in the clothes basket to be washed and we agreed that it was finished. To this day I'm pretty sure only the two of us know what happened.

As I look back on this now I realised that it wasn't the fact that I got hurt that changed the dynamic between us , it was the simple realisation that we only had each other and that was it. It obviously is not something that everyone gets or has because I constantly hear about peoples poor relationships with their siblings. So I count myself lucky.

Now if you'll excuse me I have to go make a phone call.