Happy birthday to my sister today. She’s older than me, so she should be my big sister, but she’s half my size, so I refer to her as my little big sister. But what she lacks in size she makes up for in attitude.
We grew up in Riverton, and she was three years ahead of me in school. That meant that when I was a freshman in high school, she was a senior. I was a nerdy little chubby freshman, and I got picked on because I wasn’t good at sports. I spent all my energy on hunting and fishing, even though I went out for all the sports teams. I probably would have been better at some of those sports, but I missed a lot of practices to go hunting and fishing. But my sister was one of the popular seniors, and she made it clear that nobody was to pick on me or any of my friends.
When she graduated and went off to college, I had to figure out how to be less awkward without her there to protect me. Luckily, that’s about the time I hit my growth spurt. And she came back for a few holidays to remind the high school crowd that she was still watching what was going on, even if it was from afar.
My sister and I had our differences over the years, as any siblings do, but we also had more than a few bonding moments, many of them on family camping trips. We huddled together in the dark of night when a “shortcut” to our campsite took eight hours longer than the marked route; we pooled our courage when we unexpectedly found out that Waterdog Lake was so named because it held mutant-looking mud puppies (which are very disconcerting when you accidentally catch one), and we entertained each other when we couldn’t leave the tent for 5 straight days on a campout that coincided with a storm of Biblical proportions.
So happy birthday, little big sister. I hope we get the chance to go camping again soon.
