Bad Big Brother

It all started so innocently.

A kids traveling game. The kind you played 20 years ago, when the 2-hour drive to grandma's seemingly took all day. The harmless kind you played with your siblings to pass the time in the backseat, because iPods had yet to be invented or because you were still too young to enjoy a good novel or (most likely) because your parents were too cheap to buy you a Nintendo Gameboy.

Fast Forward to 2006:

Rebekah had spent her Saturday afternoon at NorthPark Mall, getting overcharged for a haircut. She stopped by my apartment afterwards--as is her custom--to have lunch [Figure 1] with her older brother and discuss the latest goings-on in our lives.


Figure 1.

Lunch. "Mmmmmmmm.... Hummus!!"

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After lunch we drove to Kroger, to purchase salad supplies (later that evening, Rebekah was to attend the St. Sophia Greek Orthodox Church Winter Funstival, and had volunteered to make (what else?) a Greek Salad [Figure 2]. We bought the ingredients and sped home.


Figure 2.
Making the Greek Salad

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On the drive home Rebekah chimed in, "Remember the game where you look for out-of-state license plates, and the first person to find one gets to hit the other person according to the last number on the license plate?"

Her question struck me as rather odd, but I nodded my head and said yes, if only because agreeing to play her game might afford me the opportunity to legally beat the crap out of my little sister. On paper, it sounds evil and heartless, but that's just what big brothers do- we kick little sisters' asses.

"OK, let's play!" I said, and immediately I began furiously scanning every car on Mockingbird Lane for foreign plates. Rebekah, though she had (just 10 seconds ago!) brought up this game and explained its rules to me, did not at all seem interested in playing. She just quietly tinkered with her phone, sending a text message or whatever it is that kids do with phones nowadays.

There!!! Pulling out of Mockingbird Station!

"Mississippi," I screamed, "eight!!"

Before Little Sis could so much as flinch, my fists of fury were pounding her thighs, arms, and kidneys.

"Onetwothreefourfivesix," and so on... With each haymaker that connected, I counted: "Sixteen..."

Whack... Crack... Bam... Slap... Pow... etc, etc...

"TwentyfourTwentyfiveTwentysix..."

She was yelling something about stopping at eight, but with all the noise coming from the beating, I could not hear very clearly. [Figure 3.]

I thought she'd meant multiples of eight!


Figure 3
"Fight!"

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She curled up in the fetal position in the passenger seat and started using her arms and hands to block my punches. I figured I'd get in a few more solid blows before calling off the dogs. Just then, I heard a strange and grotesque sound. It was a sound I'd never heard before. It made me queasy. I knew it was not good.

Rebekah fell deathly quiet and gasped.

I was worried for a second, and my mind raced to try to figure out how I had somehow managed to accidentally kill my little sister.

She let out a whimper and started crying. I still did not know what I'd done to injure her so severely, but I already felt pretty bad about it.

She slowly placed her left hand in front of us, focused on her middle finger, and that's when we grasped the full magnitude of what I'd done:

The horrifying sound we heard was one of her beautifully-manicured fingernails breaking under the pressure of my knuckle sandwiches. Now I really felt bad.

It was a freakish-looking injury.

Her fingernail was ripped badly, and it was ripped waaaaay below the skin level, and it was quite painful to even look at. It just dangled there, spilling blood and waiting to be pulled (at the horrible expense of the person from whose hand it is being pulled). Simple clipping of the nail would not be enough to remedy this injury.

Fixing this was going to involve some degree of nail-skin separation. She was in tremendous pain, and the worst was yet to come.

"I'm sorry," I said over and over, and I immediately began offering penances:

"I'll make your Greek Salad for you," I said, as if that would shoo away the pain, "Becky, you know I've got mad skillz in the kitchen!" [Figure 4.]

"Who cares about the damn salad?!" She sobbed. "My finger is dead!!!"

Figure 4.

Mad Skillz in the kitchen

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How could I have done such a horrible thing to my sis? I was racked with guilt. I hated myself. I was the worst big brother ever...

An hour or so had passed and Rebekah was still curled up in a helpless ball and mumbling incoherently. "Are you going to be much longer?" I asked. "Because I've gotta go hang out with a bunch of hot chicks, [Figure 5] and you're kinda holding me back right now."

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Figure 5

Hot Chicks

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"I hate you", she cried. "You don't even have any chicks, you fat loser! You killed my nail! I nearly bled half to death! And all you care about is girls?!!"

She began yelling and speaking in tongues and spitting on me... Something about "curses" and "witches" and a "lifetime of erectile dysfunction." [Figure 6] But I ignored her and soon left to go chase women.

Yeah right, like she knows any real-life witches!

What the heck was she talking about, anyway??

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Figure 6