My sister Stephanie has a birthday coming up on the 17th of this month. She'll be 26, two years younger than me. I now realize that growing up she had it tougher than me. Being the first born and naturally good in school, I took the most criticism and the most praise. In contrast, my parents criti- cise my siblings more than they nurture them. There have been a couple of times when they've driven my sister to tears, and this was only a couple of years ago. I've gotten used to their criticisms and kind of ignore those comments.

When we were young we shared the same bedroom. Oh, actually I think this anecdote takes place later, so we had our own rooms. I had one of the standard bedrooms, next to the garage. We have a sprinkler timer in the garage that goes click-click-click throughout the night. Sort of rhythmic, along with the washer and dryer. My room got rather warm since I had a computer and I'm on the East side of the house.

My sister's room was actually the den. There were to doors, a normal one opposite mine and a double door on the other side of the room. It is bigger than mine (and is now my brother's room) and quite dark. It's not quite the middle of the house. Next to the front door, the studio window being next to the front door. The window is blocked from the sun most of the day which does leave the room dark.

Anyway, we used to have this bed set. It's like two beds, one of which is on this frame so the bed can be lowered to the ground and then it slides under the other bed. My sister had the bed that can be lowered. So I liked to jump up and down on my bed, and sometimes I did it on Stephanie's bed. One day I ran into her room and jumped on her bed. Whomp! Broke it, never could get it to stay up after that. But she did get a nice big bed.

In school we tended to stay away from each other. In my fourth to sixt grades she was there too. Then I went to middle school which is only two years, then high school. So we didn't go to the same school at the same time for four years. After that she was a freshman when I was a junior. The year after though was the year that they closed half the school to remove the asbestos in the class rooms. So the freshmen and sophomores were bussed to another school. Rather empty but cool to have the school to ourselves.

Then I went to Berkeley. Two years later my sister followed me there. But Berkeley is a big school so I rarely saw her until after I graduated. Now we're both adults. She is some sort of manager at one of the Big Six, er Five accounting firms. We see each other about once a month, half the time at our parents, and the other half we eat dinner together, try to stay in contact.

Through the years I've come to appreciate my sister more. She has always been the level-headed one. The responsible one. The one that plans ahead and achieves her goals. She likes to travel, has a good clique of friends. She's more well-adjust than me, and I'm really glad one of us is.