Blame it on Sis

If you’re not happy with your life, stop blaming your parents. Blame your brothers and sisters instead.

 

Behavioral scientists are just now figuring out that our siblings have a lot more to do with shaping us than even our parents. This new insight merited a cover story recently in Time magazine. The theory? During our formative years, we spend more time with our brothers and sisters than with anyone else. Our siblings teach us how to deal with conflict, how to relate to the opposite sex, how to form friendships. Plus, God willing, they’re with us for the long haul. “Our siblings may be the only people we’ll ever know who truly qualify as partners for life,” says sociologist Katherine Conger of the University of California, Davis, as reported in Time.

 

Reading the article got me thinking about how my own sister influenced me. When I was born, Dee was 5 years old and into baby dolls. No doubt my living, breathing, drooling self was a 7-pound dream come true. We have pictures of her holding me in her lap, grinning like it’s Christmas morning. Through the years, Dee patiently taught me to tie my shoes, shave my legs, and kiss a boy.

 

There were some rough times when she was in high school and I was the pest who sneaked into her room to read her diary, but when she left for college she became even more mysterious and glamorous. More than ever, I wanted to be just like her.

 

It was during this period when she influenced not only how I related to the world, she started to boss me around about my appearance. In what was to become an extreme makeover in stages, Dee started by insisting that I pierce my ears. After all, all the college girls were doing it. She made it sound mandatory, so I sat there at the kitchen table holding an ice cube to my ear lobe while she rattled on about sorority parties and “sterilized” one of Mom’s sewing needles with a match.

 

I wasn’t so mesmerized by her tales of sophisticated collegiate life that I didn’t feel the pain. In fact, I remember refusing to let her do the other one until she convinced me that I would look unbalanced (in more ways than one) with only one earring. So, I numbed the other earlobe and she poked the needle in. When we had both little gold studs in, we noticed that they pointed different directions, but it was too late to do anything about it.

 

During another of her visits home from college, she convinced me that short hair (like her new shag) was all the rage. I wasn’t a pushover this time. I had spent years growing my dishwater blond locks and coaxing my recalcitrant curls into a semblance of the Marianne Faithful/Joni Mitchell long-and-straight look.

Dee wouldn’t be denied. Oh, she didn’t bully me--she jollied me. Those who know her will recognize her M.O. She made it sound like such fun, such a lark, that I just went along with it. She did the job herself. The next Monday at school, when my friends asked me what had happened to my hair, I cried, “My sister cut it off!”

 

Her influence on me didn’t stop when she got married. When I was a junior in high school, my sister, now a young mother, found a bank that was offering a gift for opening a new account. After opening our accounts with $25 each, we went to a big room and picked out our gifts: wigs made of fake hair. Mine was an ash-blond, too-shiny “fall” which I wore anchored to the top of my head with a stretchy headband and carefully arranged around my shoulders in a desperate attempt to recreate that long-and-straight look. Judging from the stares I got and my mother’s ill-disguised disdain, I don’t think I fooled anyone.

 

With her natural charm and built-in status as role model, Dee could have done me a great deal more harm than poking holes in my ears and making me look like I was wearing a squirrel on my head. For the fact that she used her influence wisely and for the fact that we are still good friends, I am thankful.

 

According to Time, the relationship between sisters tends to be particularly close. As for Dee and me, if we end up as widows, we’ll be so lucky to have each other. And most likely, matching hairdos.