Sibling ribaldry

By: CADE GRUNST

Posted: 12/7/07

There's nothing like a younger sibling to give things perspective. My little sis started fourth grade this year, and all of a sudden I'm feeling my age.

My memory of all grades previous consists largely of scattered emotional fragments, so her trips through them were no big deal. Fourth grade, though, is different. I remember that one! Now I'm watching history repeat itself, except now I'm the annoyed old dude hating on her Tamagotchi instead of the other way around.

We're 11 years apart, Naomi and I. That's an awkward age difference, and it makes our exact relationship hard to figure. I'll be her brother forever, but I'm so much older, there's always been a little distance between us. The fact that she's my half-sister (so I only ever saw her half the week) doesn't help. Then I went and moved away to Davis when she was seven. Great.

For years, our conversations were limited either to the didactic or the simplistic. Seriously, how much does a 12th grader have in common with a six-year-old? While we still lived together, I tried to fill her with my vast stores of high school wisdom, stuffing her head with both ludicrous nonsense and upper-division science.

"Those little plates we have? They came from the bigger plates, of course. Why are they smaller? They're still babies! Why are they different colors? Hmm. Aha - it's genetic! What's "genetic" mean? Well, have a seat, Short One. Let me tell you about this dude named Mendel…"

The way I figured things, I could try to convince her that she's made of a gazillion little buggers called cells or I could hear once again that school is "fine," her teacher is "OK," her friends are "good" and if I would quit bugging her, it would be "nice."

Because of the age difference, we bored each other. Shockingly, it turned out the second-grade Naomi could only take so much detail about nucleotide base-pairing, and I can only hear the word "fine" three times in a row (really, I counted) before my brain squeezes out of my ear in a desperate attempt to escape. We had nothing to talk about in person, and when I left for college our phone calls were even more stilted.

But now, to my unabashed shock, awe, surprise and delight, we have things in common.

I was hangin' out in her room on one of my rare trips home, trying futilely to persuade her that adding wings to her stuffed Unicorn makes it a Unisus, not a Pegacorn. She was winning the debate handily, by virtue of being nine. I'd just made a crushing argument involving the various root words involved in the names of the critters in question, when (utterly ignoring my flawless logic) she responded with the ultimate retort: "You boys are annoying."

"Hey now, Goofus, I'm a boy, too. Are we all annoying?"

"Only most of you. Yesterday Arielle told me that… (you'll have to fill in the blanks for yourself, loyal reader. I'm presuming that it would be libel of a most grievous nature to print the intimate gossipy details of Mr. Williams' fourth grade class.)"

Just like that, a door opened.

Now we can chat about just how terrible homework can be, the extreme awesomeness of Freeze Tag and our shared distaste for the horrors of math. I complain about being assigned Chaucer in Middle English, she tells me how excellent (or not) her class reading books are. We can even share a mean little giggle about the kid who still can't figure out that glue isn't edible.

Sure, none of these things are - in and of themselves - terribly important to me. Tag isn't really all that Earth-shattering, and 9-year-old gossip lacks the subtlety and depth I've come to expect from my peers when they tell me about drunken proposals and half-baked sexcapades.

The point only really comes home when I call the folks to make sure everyone's still alive. After I've calmly explained to dad that his tuition money is being well spent teaching me to climb rocks and brew beer, I don't have to finish with, "And tell Munchculous Minnimus I say 'Hi.'"

I can put her on the phone:

" 'Sup, Short One?"

"Today we learned about…"

CADE GRUNST wants desperately to hear your sibling stories. Tell him about the time you punched your brother in the face at cade@ucdavis.edu.