Grasshopper

            I am a brother.

            Boogie is my ten year-old sister.

            We have watched each other grow and mature. She’s become quite the bitchy socialite, another step away from the sweet, innocent little girl I knew. The phone rings more for her than my parents’ combined. She understands the meaning of “lol”. She’s deciphered the cryptic menu of cell phones. Her favorite radio station makes the car rumble and shake as she starts to drop it like it’s hot. She googles the meaning of anal sex. Ah yes, she has changed quite dramatically. Conversely, I’ve become startled when I genuinely laugh at my parents’ jokes.

            As her brother, I felt it was my duty to prepare her for the harshness of reality that crashes in after puberty. It’s been a plan in action since the moment I realized she wasn’t going anywhere, anytime soon. My contingency covered the cruelty of boys, the power of persistence and inner strength, and the reward of fairness and curiosity. And in turn, she taught me the love of family.

            My friends refer to her as my science experiment in progress, but it can be more accurately described as a sociological or psychological study. I’m a firm believer that truth, innocence, humanity, can be found in the flow and dance of children. And where else can you find unfiltered answers than through a pure child?

It wasn’t until last Christmas I realized that my ongoing, relentless lessons could extend into the better part of her life. Boogie and I were hanging ornaments on the tree, a moment she requested personally. The house was empty and the only sound was our conversation. Or, to be more accurate, our argument. In her hand, she held a snowman decoration I had made in first grade. It was small and green with a peppermint twist colored scarf around its neck. Its googly eyes rattled goofily on a smooshed, rotund face. When I first saw it, I was surprised at how resilient it was through the years and even more surprised that my parents’ still had it. I told my sister that she had never made anything as good as what she held in her hand. And the conversation went:       

            “Nuh uh.”

            “Uh huh.”         

            “Nuh uh.”

            She threatened me with the snowman and held it firmly between her tiny two hands, fingers arched in preparation for the fatal pressure that could break the snowman in half. I was amused at her cruelty to threaten me with something sentimental and personal. Something clicked inside my head and instantly, the course of the dialogue switched gears into a monologue.

            “Go ahead. Break it.”

            She said nothing and stared at me, her eyes dark and storming. Dare me.

            “Break it. Break it. Break it. Break it. Break it.”

            Naturally, I knew what she would do. After all, she was only nine at the time. The dry crack made a hollow echo through the empty living room and I felt a perverse sense of accomplishment that also made me sick, ashamed, and deeply hurt. She held both pieces in her hand as she spared me a shrug and said, “There. Look at what you did.”

            I asked for my snowman, but she held it tightly. I told her I was going to throw it away since what good is half a snowman ornament? She didn’t release it from her grasp until I firmly pried apart her fingers and coldly tossed the clay snowman to the floor. I replaced it with a trite, cheerful glass orb in her empty palm. Slowly, she turned away from me. It took a moment to realize that she didn’t grab for another decoration. She stood at the base of the tree, stroking the silky mirror of the ornament she had hung. Her back was to me and there was no visible shoulder shake, but I knew she was crying. I’ve learned about Boogie that when she cries in front of me, she does it without the mewling or sobs that's reserved for my parents. It’s more about healing instead of the con for sympathy. Those are tears of remorse, not self-pity.

            I gathered her up and she asked me why I did that. And my simple answer was,

            “To see if you would.”

            Which struck her as stupid, but I pointed out her tears. If it was so stupid, why did you do it? At that moment, I wanted to provide the moral, to pour it out for her, to prepare her, to save her, but I had to keep it in perspective. So I fell back on the old cliché, “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.”

            My teaching methods border along psychological cruelty, but how else do you expect to steel a person without it? Anybody can read a book or watch the Discovery channel. Anybody can be educated. But it takes real decisions and real consequences to learn and grow.

            Boogie is fiercely competitive. But only with me. I think I subconsciously designed the relationship to be like that. I wanted her to be the girl that the guys respected, a girl who spoke her mind, stuck to her beliefs, and never sacrificed for the lesser, instant gratification. To realize early that the biggest enemy she will face in life is herself and to overcome the self-doubts that are guaranteed to come. I like to think I’m teaching her that you can’t get something for nothing. That there are only three free guaranteed things in life. Air, water, and mind. Everything else is merely a possibility.

            She hates losing to me, but she hates it even more when I deliberately lose to her. I’m horrible at rock, paper, scissors. I somehow manage to lose 95% of the time. It’s been the deciding factor between Boogie and I on numerous occasions, whether it’s about who will get the last soda, who has to smell who’s feet, or who gets the better spot at the dinner table. Once, after I lost, I told her I had been deliberately losing to her the whole time. She threw an emotional fit and since then, we never played it again.

            She’s growing up, but a shrinking middle ground can be found on the Xbox. She loves the fighting games and I love to humor her. At first, she played and she lost. Alot. And at first, she started crying and she quit. I told her that I beat her not because I was older, taller, stronger, or smarter. But because it was a game and I had practice. And the game was just that. A game. How could she expect to beat me when I’ve learned the game and she simply started picking up and playing? And how could you get so angry over something so petty? I told her to learn and until then she would keep losing. Something must have clicked because when she was eight, after a particularly nasty fistfest, she said rather matter-of-factly, “Oh well, at least I was trying my hardest.”

            I almost dropped my controller.

            And now, when I yell at the television and throw my controller on the floor, my words come back to haunt me as she calls from the other room, “Mackie, it’s just a game.”

            But not everything she’s learned from me is good. I have Xbox Live, which is a subscription service to a global online gaming community. Boogie loves to use it to play Halo 2, an intensely popular shooting game, and she would whisper into the microphone, “You like that, BEE-YOTCH?” after a particularly good headshot and end the game session with a perky quip of, “Did you know you were beaten by a ten year-old,” and she would pause, dramatically. “Girl.”

            Ah yes, she does me proud.

            And while I dread the day that she’s no longer Boogie, the poop-eater, the most annoyingest girl in the whole wide world, I know I’ll be proud when she transforms from sponge to rock, to become Siana, the woman, but always and forever, the little sister.