Blood is thicker

How many of you guys have a younger sister? You may relate well to this story… I have a little sister. She’s three years younger than I am. And we have never been close. I mean, if you got on dictionary.com and looked up ‘sibling rivalry’ you’d see our picture there on the website. As long as I can remember we tortured one another without mercy. And over the years we both scored several major victories; I remember one time, I shot her with my BB gun… Yeah, I paid for that one, believe me. But as much as we picked on one another, as much as I tormented her and as much as she annoyed me, like a thorn in my flesh, she was always my little sister. Mine to torment, and mine to protect.

Have you ever heard it said that big brothers always look out for their younger siblings? Well, let me just tell you that the reason you may have heard that is because it tends to be true. I could pick on my little sister, but you? You need permission.

Illustration: It’s my senior year in high school. My sister is a freshman, and as everyone know, freshmen in high school are at the bottom rung of the social ladder, but my sister, well she was low on the social totem pole even among her own classmates. She didn’t have many friends. And one day, I find out form my mother (because my sister and I were barely on speaking terms) that another girl, an older girl, tried to pick a fight with my sister in the girl’s bathroom, then threatened her when it was broken up by a teacher. Mom asked me to watch out for her for a couple of days.

Honestly, I didn’t know this girl who threatened my sister, but it didn’t matter who she was. What mattered was that she issued the threat. So I passed the information along to several of my friends, and asked them to watch for any signs of trouble. I put my friends on alert because a threat to her was an affront to me. And that’s the last I knew of the situation before the principle called me into his office.

Now, being in the principle’s office was nothing new to me. I was the Student Body President and the principle and I were quite chummy, really. Still, it was startling to see how serious he seemed that day when he called me out of class and asked me to sit down in his office. I could tell that something wasn’t right, but I had no idea what it might be. That’s when he told me to call off my posse. It turned out that although I didn’t know this girl bully who dared threaten my sister, one of my friends did. So, like a good friend will, he gathered the rest of our gang, found this poor unfortunate wannabe tough-girl, and called her out in front of the school security police. It was an impressive display of muscle, I was told; four senior football players threatening this one freshman girl with excessive violence.

It was one of my greatest moments, and I wasn’t even there to see it. Ironically, I was the only one called into the office over the incident. No one was ever hurt, and it might go down as just another amusing tale of family pride except for this one point: none of the guys that forced an end to the threat on my sister’s safety were family. In fact, none of them really had a relationship with my sister at all. They did what they did for me. They understood that in spite of all appearances I valued my little sister and that was enough for them. The reason I was called into the principle’s office that day is simple: I did what I had to do to protect my sister, and I’d do it again.

Years later my dad and I found out that she was being physically abused another in her seemingly endless string of loser boyfriends, and I remember distinctly sitting at the breakfast table with my father and planning the violence we would do to repay the favor. It wasn’t idle talk either. For several years I had to grapple with whether or not I would try to seriously injure, maim, kill, that individual. For literally years I would day-dream behind the wheel of my truck about what I would do if I ever saw that guy strolling across the street in front of me… Forgiveness came, but it took a long time to come.

In fact, I cannot imagine a touchier subject than my family. Nothing would tempt me more quickly to violence than anything happening to them. God forbid it ever does.