Diggin through the archives...

wow... you never know what you'll find when you go back through your old emails...

i was looking at them today and ran across this little gem i thought was lost forever.

its a personal narrative i had to do for one of my english classes back in the day, it was a wednesday, lol

(according to Dane Cook anytime someone says "back in the day" they are always referring to wednesday... lmao. i dunno, if i gotta explain the joke i guess that takes some of the humor out of it.)

Anywho... without further adieu...



“William, how many times have I told you to stop swinging things around? You’re going to hurt somebody.”

“But look Ma, I’m a ninja!”

“William--“

“Watch this!!”

“--Look out for your sister!!”

Before that moment, I was probably one of the meanest older brothers in history. After that fated incident, I was very overprotective of my younger sister. I guess when you see someone at their weakest and most vulnerable state; you’d do anything to keep them from feeling like that again.

When my sister was born, I was only four years old. I was still too young to even understand where children came from. But when my ‘new sister’ was finally brought home, needless to say I was less than thrilled. One thing that really stood out was something my mother said to me after the new baby was settled in her room. I specifically remember my mother saying this. “You have to look out for her you know. She’s not as big as most babies. When she gets older, you have to make sure she doesn’t get picked on by the bigger kids.” Unfortunately, I didn’t take that to heart until about 3 years later.

It was a nice day, so my mother decided to take my sister and me to the local pizzeria, our “hangout spot”. For some reason, I decided to pick up this thick plastic piping. I was into martial arts and Power Rangers as a child, so I began to pretend I could do the moves. Not heeding the warnings of my ever-so-watchful mother, I spun, twirled, and attacked thin air. As I turned around, I failed to notice my little sister standing off to my right. As the pipe I held came into contact with the left side of her face, I froze. Within the next three seconds, I came to a terrible realization. How horrible of a brother must I be to let something like this happen? Blood, tears, and a trip to the emergency room immediately followed. That could have possibly been one of the longest car rides in my life. I sat in the backseat hanging my head in shame, trying to hide the fact that I was on the verge of tears. The emergency room was even worse. As I sat in the lobby, all I could hear was the screaming of a three-year-old receiving medical stitches near her left eye. An inch and a half more and she would have been blinded. On the drive home, nobody spoke. No radio, we just rode quietly, the silence broken intermittently by the sniffles and whimpers of the injured.

So I became what I felt was the ideal big brother. Of course we had the occasional spat, but let anyone else mess with her and all she had to do was tell me. I dealt with my share of neighborhood bullies, mainly consisting of boys who were at that age where they liked to pick on little girls. Dealing with these boys was easy, but every once in a while I would have to protect myself against their older and much bigger family members. I rarely came out victorious in these situations, but no pain could match how bad I felt for what I had done.

Thinking back, it seems like it was all a dream. But that dream is brought to reality every time I look at the scar in the corner of her left eye. It hurts to even glance at it, small as it may be. We haven’t spoken about that incident for quite some time now. It has always seemed like one of those things that we try to forget. But I can never forget, that was the defining moment that made me realize how much I love my little sister.

Peace.