Did you know that October 6th is “National Slam Your Bedroom Door Day?” It is also “Scream At Your Rotten Brothers Day”, “Punch Your Rotten Brothers Day”, “Kick Your Rotten Brothers Day”, and “Don’t Ever Listen To Your Rotten Brothers Day.”

It also happens to be my sister Amanda’s birthday. She began laying down the ground work for the establishment of these days back in 1978 when Mom and Dad brought her home from the hospital to begin the painful process of growing up with to Neanderthal older brothers. About six years later Mom and Dad helped crank it up another notch with the introduction of a little Neanderthal in training.

The “League of Sisters With Brothers” caught wind of the developing situation and tried to intervene on Amanda’s behalf but were unsuccessful. The three stooges thwarted their plan by moving in swiftly to administer snuggies to the concerned sisters. They were last seen pedaling their “My Little Pony” bikes south towards the hills, defeated, the tassels on their handle bars fluttering in the breeze and the waist band of their underwear rumpled at about shoulder height.

A favorite game amongst us three goons was to see who could get our sister to storm off to her bedroom and scream “I hate you” as her bedroom door crashed to a close. Jarvis was undoubtedly the master of this little slice of fun with an unbelievable success rate.

Amanda was well aware that Gabe and myself were easily distracted and would forget what we were doing relatively quickly, but Jarvis was focused. He was relentless. He wrote the book on, “Effective Little Sister Button Pushing.” Well actually he didn’t write it, he posed for the majority of the illustrations, and provided the bulk of the statistics.

But then something horrible happened one day. Amanda started to fight back, and she didn’t fight the same way we did. We relied purely on aggravation techniques like name calling, disfiguring Barbie dolls, and just basic pestering. She went right to the heart of the matter, actually a little lower, and relied on a series of well placed kicks. When your sister discovers the debilitating power of place kicking you suddenly become much more cordial when in close range.

You know when someone’s sister has made this discovery because all name calling by the brother is suddenly only performed while passing quickly atop their bicycle. She has won, and she smiles smugly as you peddle for all your worth glancing nervously over your shoulder. You soon learn that she won’t chase, no girls don’t do that, they just wait, and they never forget. Scary isn’t it. Gives me the willies just thinking about it.

I don’t get to see my sister much. For some reason she refuses to reside in the same state as her brothers, not sure why. If she did live here her neighbors would question why a grown man pedals his bike quickly by her house everyday calling her names. She would smile smugly as she laced up her steal toed boots, and say, “Oh that’s my brother, inviting me over for my birthday.”

This is gonna hurt.