05 Dec The Day My Baby Sister was Born and Stole My Shine

Sharing last week’s post about my boys and their relationship, inspired me to write about my relationship with one of my siblings. My younger sister, Zari, is a force to be reckoned with and has been since the day she was born. In her own words, she is a mix of “Beyonce, RuPaul and Michelle Obama” which is actually a creeply accurate description.

Today, Zari is absolutely one of my best friends in the entire world, but this was not always the case. Let’s take a trip back down memory lane.

It’s 1992 and here we are, a perfect family of four living in a small home with barely any money, but an overabundance of love. Just me, my parents and my older sister Bonnie. I was a very quiet baby, which is a trait that unfortunately did not follow me into my later years when I became wild and crazy. According to almost everyone with whom my Bonnie, came into contact with, she was “all over the place” hyper- like borderline crackhead type hyper. But once I was born she took such interest in taking care of me that she got her priorities in order and left her childish ways behind her. Now that I think about it, that was probably why we got along so well. Well that and the fact that Bonnie was my very own personal butt wiper. I know you have questions so allow me to explain.

With two children and two demanding jobs, my parents had their plates full. They worked it out though. My mom was with us at home when she got off of work. Made us dinner, bathed us, read us stories, played with us and put us to bed along with a series of other parental duties. She never really allowed us to eat sweets, but she was hella creative. She would come up with all kinds of healthy snacks, but her claim to fame was “Baby Ice Cream” aka frozen grapes. While my mom was working during the day, my dad watched us – which meant early morning cartoons, endless sugary cereal and frank and beans.

My parents were great! However there was one area of parenting that they were not too fond of – ass wiping! Once they figured out how helpful she could be, poor Bonnie was put to work. “BONNNNNNNNNN! BONNNNNNN!” “I’m coming Katryce…” Bonnie would say with an irritated face and voice of frustration as she walked in to the hallway that led to our bathroom. There in the doorway I would be bent over, ass up and out, looking at Bonnie through my legs. Yes. That’s right. Every time I dropped a dueskie, my nine-year old, big sister had to come clean me up. Talk about ride or die- geez.

Life was sweet and I ran our house like a boss. I had endless cartoons, baby ice cream and a big sister that would wipe my ass on call. Nothing could change this lavish life I was living and I had decided that I would live in this euphoria forever. That is until the unspeakable happened. My parents uttered the words that would change my life forever “Girls, We’re having another baby!” Come again? I didn’t quite catch that. It sounded like you said you were having another baby, which MUST be wrong because you already have a perfectly adorable mini human right here in front of you. As much as I hoped this was just a cruel April Fools’ joke, I soon realized that these goofballs were really having another baby and my reign was nearing its end.

Did they even consider how I would feel about this new baby? If I thought this was a good idea? Am I the only person capable of logical thinking in this house? Why the fuck is everyone smiling like this is a good thing? How is my dad going to watch cartoons with me if he’s be too busy picking up a double shift to cover the bills of this new baby? How is my mom going to fit the grapes in the freezer to make my baby ice cream when it will already be filled with bags of frozen breast milk? And then I realized the worst part of it all. Not only was I going to have to learn how to wipe my own ass, but soon I would be wiping someone else’s.

March 31, 1993 also known as the day Zari was born, is the day my life forever changed. First of all, she was like the cutest baby you will ever see in your life (see picture below).

So yeah, I had to compete with that shit. Then she got the name Zari which means beautiful in Swahili while me and my big sister got names that have absolutely no meaning- Bonnie-Love and Katrycia. Just two outlandish names that my mom claims she “put a lot of thought into”.

The worst part of it all was that from the moment she was born, it was her life’s mission to make my life a living hell. I know what you’re thinking. Katryce is being dramatic again. But I’m not. I promise! The first time I knew Zari was a little shit was the Case of the Missing Necklace Pendant.

When I was 6 years old, my mom bought me this bomb ass choker with a blinged out “diamond” heart pendant. The rock was HUGE! I liked flashy things, so I wore that shit like every day and stunted on everyone at the playground. One morning, I woke up and started to get ready for school. I brushed my teeth, got my hair done, got dressed. All I needed was my special choker to slay my outfit. When I went in to my drawer to get it, my choker was missing the diamond heart pendant. I had a Class A, nuclear meltdown. My mom and I searched for like 25 minutes and it was nowhere to be found. That is until my mother was changing Zari’s shitty diaper and found the pendant buried deep inside in her poop. This means one of two things: 1. Zari took the pendant and put it in her diaper or 2. Zari swallowed the pendant whole and was a demon baby. I’m leaning towards number 2. For those of you wondering- we threw the pendant away.

Then, there was her bitch of an imaginary friend, Tiffany. She was a complete bugaboo and went everywhere with us. My parents entertained that shit by setting a place for Tiffany at the dinner table and even making Bonnie and I scoot over in the back seat of their little ass jeep so that Tiffany could “squeeze” in. Was I the only person that noticed that Tiffany was invisible? It got so bad that I started thinking that Tiffany was real and I was the crazy one. It was a complete shit show and Zari was the fucking director!

You ever seen the movie The Omen? At one point, I strongly believed that it was loosely based off of my life and Zari was Damien. She just thoroughly enjoyed annoying me and destructed anything that even remotely brought me joy. But even with all the torture Zari put me through, I still tried to be a good big sister and teach her valuable life lessons every now and then. I taught her how to produce a Broadway quality re-enactment of The West Side Story. I taught her how to master the art of the Nintendo. I even taught her that it is completely socially acceptable to play Christmas jingles all year round. You’re welcome, Zari!

Even though we started off a little rocky, some of my best memories in life are with Zari! I mean she’s literally the only other human being on this planet that will do half of the dumb shit I think up. Like that one time we spent an entire hour sniffing different cake fragrances at Michaels and gagged the entire time. Or the time we had a stake-out because I had a stalker and we decided to take matters into our own hands. Trust me. I’m going to do a full post on that shit. And let’s not forget the endless neighborhood bake sales and car washes we hosted that never brought in more than $20.

Now that I think about it, she wasn’t THAT bad. We had some pretty good times, if you ignore the time I tried to teach her how to fight and I ended up with a busted lip and a broken ego.

Remember how it was for you when your younger sibling was born and stole your shine? Let me know below☺