“I’m only reading because I want to read, you can’t make me!”
“Ok, now I’ll play for a little bit, but please note that I’m only playing because I WANT to play! (and because the book was kinda shitty”)
Last night I went to dinner with my family to celebrate my sister’s 27th birthday. She is 13 months younger than I am which means that I pretty much had a best friend since I was one year old. That tiny person had an iron will – come hell or high water, that little bird would get her way. Being raised by conservative Afrikaans parents, let me tell you that for her to get her way was no small feat – she moved mountains!
Like any brother and sister would, we fought a lot. Sometimes we fought about the most trivial kak* imaginable. If you have a brother or a sister, I’m sure you can relate to the fighting, but it has to be a sibling of the opposite sex. If I had a brother, I’d probably have bliksemed** him more than a few times by now (the likely truth is that I would be the one missing a few teeth), but when you fight with a girl, you have to be smart about it – you can’t leave marks!
As kids, we were best friends. We are still very close, but we’re two very different people today. When we lived in Kempton Park (back in the very early 80s) we would have the time of our lives with a bendy stick and this weird mud pool thing in our backyard. My sister completely ruined her first, and up to her Matric farewell, her ONLY, dress in that mud pool. I remember the neighbour’s kids weren’t allowed to play with us, because their mom liked dressing them in white, and we liked to roll in mud – that’s also the reason why our first dog wasn’t a poodle, but a brownish spaniel named Floris… As long as we were outside the house, but within earshot, my folks were ok.
The death-by-mudpool dress:
It was in that house where my sister and I had our first fight. I was 2 or 3 years old, which would make her 1 or 2 at the time. Now I don’t personally recall this, but my father retells it with delight!
Mini-Señor (that’s me, blondie) was sitting on Señor Senior’s (my dad) desk, in the study, playing quietly with some bulky toy (Actually, we were so poor growing up, if I wasn’t born a boy, I’d have nothing to play with…), while my dad was working at his typewriter (yes, no laptops back then) probably hammering out something intelligent and businessy. Suddenly, a small voice pierced the long bout of silence, “Owie! You’re hurting me! Stop it Boeta!” It was my sister, yelling at me, nay, PLEADING with me to stop hurting her. Immediately after that my mom’s voice boomed, “Alexander! Leave your sister alone! Don’t make me come in there!”
My dad looked up from his typewriter, he looked at me playing on his huge desk, nowhere near my sister as these yelps of terror escaped her room. He stood up and walked down the hall. He didn’t enter her room, instead he took a little looky loo whilst standing outside in bemused silence, waiting.
According to my dad, my sister was colouring. He watched her intently as she was going to town with her crayons and her brand new Popeye colouring book. After a few minutes, without even looking up, she screamed into her colouring book, “Ouch! That hurts! Boeta, stop it!” followed by my mother’s voice from the kitchen, “Alexander, how many times must I say it?! Leave your sister alone or I’ll voetter*** you!”
My dad started laughing and fetched my mom to point out what this wily minx was doing. The first womanly thing she perfected, it would seem, was multitasking – colouring and selling out the brother. The CHEEK?! (But don’t you worry, payback is a biatch!)
I remember my sister as the obedient, quiet one. I was the unruly, loud one. Well, I got more “ruly” as I got older, unfortunately I also got louder. As I mentioned, my sister was stanch about getting her way. One day, still in Kempton Park, my mom made us hotdogs – you know, kid food. We had the worsies ready and some fresh foot-long rolls when young (VERY young, according to my mom, she was no older than 18 months) Hanli piped up and mentioned that she didn’t care for these long rolls, she wanted a bun. Of course my mom hadn’t purchased buns, who eats a hotdog in a bun, seriously!? The wors was ready and my mom sure as hell wasn’t going to the shops again to satisfy the whims of a silly 18-month-old. She probably said something along the lines of “tough shit” (though I may have coloured the language since then). But Hanli wanted her bun. The breadrolls my mother bought was clearly not up to the queen’s standards, so she walked the 3 blocks to the Spar, liberated them of one bun, and walked back. I think this was a massive shock for my folks, they didn’t see her for a few minutes, assumed she threw a wobbly over the whole roll/bun fiasco, and all of a sudden she walked in with the bread type of her choice. How about that? Amazing what a little kid soaks up, her 18-month-old brain must have told her, “Thar be buns, yar!” and she pillaged the Spar accordingly.
That reminds me of the South African magician named Martino. Like most kids, my sister and I adored Martino. Magic was awesome, and he made it look so simple! One trick Martino performed was plucking the table cloth from this heavily laden table, and everything remained perfectly still. “Oooooooh, aaaaaaaaah” the audience sang in approval.
To my 3 year old sister, this looked doable. There was an added bonus, she didn’t have to go look for a table cloth or anything as the table in the dining room was already stacked to the ceiling. Not with your conventional knives, forks or candelabra, but rather with a myriad porcelain figurines that my mom and gran had purchased in other countries or antique stores, some of them heirloom and quite frankly, irreplaceable. In one smooth motion, my teeny tiny sibling basically destroyed everything on that table.
My dad warned her not to do it again, he didn’t punish her immediately but let’s face it, she isn’t a magician. My sister heard him and acknowledged his warning, but instead of heeding it, she laid the table again, stacking it up with broken and yet-to-be-broken figurines alike. And with a 1-2-3 kul-jou-hier-kul-jou-daar en SIEDAAR, she managed to break everything.
My dad took her by the hand, led her to her room, explained what she did wrong, spanked her for not listening to him in the first place and for breaking gran’s things, hugged her and sent her on her way. Her eyes filled with tears, her cheeks red and puffy, she went back to the dining room, put everything back on the table. First the table cloth and then the shattered porcelain figurines. For the third time that evening my sister failed to master Martino’s trick. My dad, perplexed and vibrating from sheer lividness, asked her WHY she continued to do something he told her not to do. Through teary eyes, little Zonkie matter-of-factly replied, “Omlat ek wil!” (Because I want to!)
We did some stupid things in those days, good grief! Inconsiderate things, dangerous things, but we were kids, we didn’t know. One day, my sister and I got my mother’s entire teaspoon collection, two candles and a hammer. We played blacksmith-blacksmith. How do you play that? Well, you heat up the pewter teaspoon over the candle and then you flatten the little scoopy bit with the hammer, BAM! Like a blacksmith would!
One day we played dead at the side of the road to see if we can get motorists to stop. The only thing we had that looked close to blood was the All Gold tomato sauce and some Worcester sauce. I did her make-up (by emptying the two bottles on her) and directed her to lie on the side of the road, leg on the curb, head in the street. She did exactly as I said, but we still didn’t get any motorist to stop. Today I am forced to ask myself – what would we have done if we got one to stop? What would i have done if some tool didn’t look where he/she was going? Stupid kids!
Near Guy Fawkes we’d go to the kafee on our corner which was run by a questionable gentleman from some eastern sub-continent. “Change? What change? Here, take chappies!” was his mantra. He stocked fireworks, but the best shit was under the counter, and you had to ask for the good stuff. Since we spent all our allowances there, I guess he didn’t have any qualms about selling us the dynamite he kept under that counter. Ok, it wasn’t real dynamite, but it was extremely expensive to us almost-10-year-olds, and it sure left a few holes in our backyard. My mom still doesn’t know what happened to some of her pots…
There are so many wonderful stories I can tell you about my sister, and I probably will tell you those stories as the Super Awesome Bear gets older. But today, as it was her birthday yesterday, I want to thank her for always being a solid citizen, a good daughter, a great sister and a best friend. I look forward to the next 27 years worth of wonderful memories and silly stories, and I hope that every one of them will be as beautiful and as awesome as she is. Happy birthday sis!
A few more pics of the cutie:
Afrikaans words to learn, featured in this article:
* “Kak” means shit or trivial stuff.
** “Bliksem” = Fisticuffs. “Bliksemed” is just the past tense of fisticuffs… Fisticuffed?
*** “Voetter” is the polite, parental way of gently informing a child that they are going to fuck your shit up!