Happy Birthday, Sis.

Warning: if it's important to you to keep your high and worshipful regard for me, today's post is a good one to skip. Just saying.

So it's my sister's birthday and after thinking about it long and hard, I finally decided what to get the girl who doesn't have everything but she lives in a different state and adding postage to the cost of any present makes it way too expensive to send. Or not really, but I never get to the post office in time for anything. Ask the IRS.

But I thought of the perfect gift: a long overdue apology.

One time, when I came home from college for Christmas, my (younger by five years) sister was going out with some of her friends. I was particularly cranky that night for some reason, and when she came whipping around the corner of the hallway to grab something she forgot, she stepped on my bare foot.

"Ha, ha! Sorry about that!" she tossed over her shoulder on the way to her room. My former room. I followed her.

"That hurt. You need to apologize for real." Don't ask me what was wrong with me. I said I was cranky.

An eyeroll. "I did apologize."

"It wasn't sincere. Make it sincere."

Here's the part where I don't remember exactly what happened next but I'm sure she said something like "Make me" and I probably took her up on it because we ended up in a slap fight. Yeah, I was at least twenty years old and we were still in a slap fight. This happened a lot. The thing is, at some point, usually after thirty seconds, we would realize how stupid it was and start laughing and then we would get over whatever caused the slap fight in the first place.

Usually.

But that night, she busted up laughing and I was still mad. Because apparently I took my evil pills that night. So while she sat on her bed giggling, I blocked the door and said something really cool like, "You better quit smiling."

And I think she said, "Move. Everyone's waiting for me in the car."

And I said, "Too bad. You're still smiling and you still haven't apologized."

And she probably said, "Make me," again.

And for some reason, I totally lost it. And I punched her.

Right under the eye.

We slapped for years, and occasionally had on-the-floor headlock brawls. But we never punched, and we definitely never punched in the face.

Her hand flew up to cover the red welt that popped up, and after a second of shocked silence (where I admit I felt a little satisfaction because I'm a bad person), she ran to my dad in the livingroom and said, "Melanie punched me!" and pointed to her eye.

And because he was watching Star Trek: The Next Generation and because the accusations my brother and sister made that I was spoiled are totally true, my dad looked up distractedly at her bright pink welt and then over at me leaning defiantly against the wall, and then he said to my sister, "You probably shouldn't bother her."

Her mouth fell open, I laughed, and she stormed out.

So here's the apology: I totally shouldn't have laughed when he said that.

Happy Birthday.

Oh, yeah. And your Kiva gift certificate is in your email.