I talk about my sister Teara a lot on here. Mostly in a mocking way, but only because I know she can take it and will laugh right along with me. See, Teara was the queen of not giving a fuck before not giving a fuck was cool.

Once when I was a little buck-toothed, mulleted girl, riding around on my bike that we called the nasty pink Huffy (and not in the good, Janet Jackson “nasty” way, but in the “I hate this ugly bike with it’s banana loaf seat because I’d rather have a purple Mongoose like my cousin Joey” way), I skid out on some gravel, and while lying face-down in the street, one of the neighborhood kids laughed in my face and made me cry. Next thing I know, Teara pulls up on her 10-speed looking like Napoleon Dynamite and says, “What happened?” I barely got the full sentence out and she peeled out, tight perm blowing in the wind, to confront the kid who laughed at me.

When I was older and the mullet was replaced with a giant teased head of hair that earned me the nickname “Tiff the Biff”, I made the mistake of going out with a guy who had just broken off a long relationship with a girl who was best friends with one of the scariest bitches in school.

I was sitting in my living room watching MTV (my parents finally gave in and got us cable), when the phone rang. It was the ex- girlfriend and her crazy-ass friend SCREAMING at me. I sat there and took it while simultaneously shitting in my pants.

Teara caught wind of what was going on, marched up the stairs to my parents bedroom where there was another phone line, tight perm bouncing with every step, and proceeded to SCREAM BACK at them.

My first instinct was to say, “NO TEARA DON’T!” but something magical happened that day. In the midst of them screaming, “You better not fucking go near him again!” and Teara screaming, “You better shut the fuck up and stop calling here!” – they thought it was ME screaming at them because our phone voices are identical. All of a sudden the “crazy” girl backed down!

With this new sense of empowerment, my own “crazy” was born. I started screaming right along with Teara. I gave an F that day – I gave many Fs that day – as I told them what they could do with their empty threats, that like so many bullies, disappeared the moment I stepped up to them.

* NEWSFLASH: bullying is not new. It’s been around since the dawn of time, it just seems much more prevalent these days because of the internet. Slam books were how you destroyed girls back in the day by writing that their hair looked greasy. (True story. Which to that I say “F you! My hair wasn’t greasy, that was hairspray making it look super-shiny, you idiot.” In retrospect, she was probably just jealous of my luxurious biff.)

Back to Teara.

When I was in 8th grade my boyfriend and I got busted by our school principal for kissing in the hallway. She instructed us to go to her office first thing in the morning to face our punishment.

* NEWSFLASH: Kids were always “fast”. All the couples in Robert Moses Middle School were frenching each other goodbye before getting on the bus as if they were going off to war. Where the hell were the teachers? Did they not care? Or were they just too busy laughing at all us fools?

I was SO scared. I had a knot in my stomach for the rest of the day. Then when Teara got home, I went to her room and whined about it to her.

I remember laying on her bed with my legs up on the wall,

“Oh nooo…what am I going to dooo…? Wah wah wahhhh…”

Teara stopped picking her perm for a minute and turned to me to say, “Who gives a shit? What is she going to do – yell at you?”

She was right, and I immediately felt better. I went to the office the next day, embarrassed, but a lot less scared – thanks to Teara.

I wanted to write this post because I recently found out a friend of mine is having her 3rd daughter. Some who are either rude or don’t know any better, told her she must be disappointed that she’s not having a boy. I commented that she was very lucky and so were her daughters. It may have come off as a trite remark, but I really meant it.

People often look at parents as “blessed” to have “1 of each”. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure that is wonderful too, especially for the parents since they get to experience what it’s like to raise a boy and a girl. But for siblings, and as far as I’m concerned, having a sister was the best thing that could have ever happened to me.

I know a lot of brothers and sisters who are close, but there’s nothing like the bond between sisters, or brothers for that matter – as I see it with my own 3 boys.

I tell them on a regular basis how lucky they are to have each other. It doesn’t get much better than having your own mini-gang that always has your back … except of course, having your own crazy sister who doesn’t GAF 👭🏻❤️