My Sister’s First Love

My sister and I getting along famously on a skating rink in our backyard that my father made each year.

My sister found her first true love early on in life, it was not to be a young prince charming, nor a shy gentle boy but rather a box of sand. The sandbox at the park near our home in Orleans was her first real obsession that pushed our bond to the very limits. When I was nine years old, my sister was four, my parents moved us to an end unit townhome in Orleans, which back then was not the bustling suburb it is today. I was devastated at the time as I was losing all my friends both around my house and in my school. Knowing my mother and how emotional she is this must not have been an easy decision for her but it was definitely the right one as I was surely destined for a dark future had we stayed in our old Vanier neighborhood. I eventually made new friends and got over the move while my sister adapted quickly and without trouble.

I will never look at one of these with a smile.

When she was old enough she got a little tikes red wagon and a shit load of toys to play in the sand which brings me back to my sister’s love of that park and the joys we had in retrieving her from there when it was time to come home, either for supper or because it was getting dark. At first my parents had the pleasure of fetching her, it didn’t take them long to realize they had a one boy army to send marching on a solo mission with little chance of success, and after all isn’t that what having kids is all about? Giving them the shitty jobs since they don’t have a choice in the matter. I was tasked with trudging down into enemy territory and extracting the valuable target with little concern for collateral damage.

We didn’t always fight, at least outside the park. Sometimes I would play dress up with her… within the house of course.

I swear I must have had nightmares about getting her from that park, that red wagon is etched into the back of my eyelids for the rest of my life. I’m quite sure that these errands affected our relationship somewhat as you would not believe what it took to get her out of there. I would arrive at the park quite innocently, especially in the beginning, and announce to her that it was time to come back home expecting that this would be reason enough to motivate her to pack the million toys back into that little wagon of hers and head home obediently, but nothing could be further from the truth. She didn’t give a shit if my parents wanted her home, she wanted to play in the sand dammit and that’s what she was going to do. Those that lived around the park must have tuned in every night for our daily battle royale. I would follow up the order by first picking up some of the scattered toys and placing them in the wagon. This would immediately piss my sister off something fierce, she went from a little innocent girl to super saiyan in two seconds. She stood up yelling at the top of her lungs and proceeded to grab said toys out of the wagon and chuck them fuckers as far as she could back into the sandbox, kids in the park were hitting the deck like live grenades were being chucked. It was a race against time, how many toys could I collect and get into the wagon before she could chuck them back out.

Here’s an idea of what going super saiyan looks like, it’s pretty intense.

Eventually I updated my tactical plan by doing an initial run by picking up as many toys as I could and dumping them, into the red wagon of course, then I would grab my sister and carry her as far away as possible and race my ass back to the park to finish off the job. Then I’d have to drag her back home kicking and screaming all the way, pitching toys all over the neighbourhood as if she was leaving a breadcrumb trail in order to find her way back to the park. I wasn’t the only one coming up with intricate plans to seal a victory however, she caught on quick and began using the sandbag technique making it almost impossible to drag her home without causing her harm. I was resilient however, I adjusted my strategy as well and fought to drag her out of the sandbox and into the wagon. Once there I would hold her down and pull the wagon home and do a second run for the toys afterwards. I sometimes got stopped by worried parents, who thought I was abducting her considering the way she was yelling, I don’t remember what I said but they always let me go with my super nova sister. Yep I’m positive these pleasure strolls affected our relationship during that time as she saw me as the mean prick that dragged her away from the love of her life and I saw her as the little brat that made me feel like an ass each and every time.

Before the park wars had begun I was the perfect brother in her eyes.

It wasn’t all bad for me either, thanks to these little interludes I did grow to be more patient which has served me well in other areas of my life, and it’s definitely one thing that I did for my mother and father that was not selfish and which truly helped them. My sister did many things to test the limits of my patience but she did so innocently and without malice. We were mortal enemies during those fifteen minutes but we are blood till the bitter end and nothing gets between our bond including tactical park warfare.

Cedric Jean-Marie