Motion Sickness

Motion Sickness

My sister Ann always gets sick in the car. You know the thing. Can’t sit in the back. Can’t sit in the middle. Has to have the window open. Can’t ride in the way back with the dog. I’m always back there. With the dog and the pee can. Another thing. I can read in the car. No problem. I do it sometimes just to get her mad. She can’t stand it. Just the thought of reading in the car. I offer her my book. It’s real good, I tell her. It’s about a mouse who lives just like a kid. He’s brilliant. Burns her up. My sister says she gets sick because we’re going so fast. I tell Ann that in science they said the earth is actually moving about 18 miles a second. She tells me to shut up. My mom says we don’t say shut up in this family.

But she gets back at me. We don’t get a lot of candy at our house unless it’s a holiday, like Easter. But then you have to wait till after Mass, after breakfast, after you look for all the eggs. Halloween is the best because whatever is in the bag — Bit O’ Honeys, Hershey bars, Corn Suckers — nobody can take it away. I like to dump mine all out on the bed and see if I got a Big Hunk or a Heath Bar. I can’t stand Heath Bars. Or Necco wafers. My sister Ann loves them. Weird. One time my mom gave us each a whole Hershey bar. I was crunching away at mine as soon as I could get it out of the wrapper. Pretty soon mine’s all gone. My sister Ann is sitting there taking one square at a time – you know how you can break it off in squares, right? Actually rectangles if you want to know. Anyway, here she is taking one piece at a time and slowly just sucking on it. Letting it melt. Mine’s all gone and she’s not even half way through. Burns me up.

My sister gets everything. Piano lessons, ballet lessons, Girl Scouts. I was in the Brownies for a little bit – pretty dumb. I liked having a uniform though since my sister had a Girl Scout uniform. Actually the best part was when we had a Halloween party and Patty’s mom – she was the group leader – she made us sloppy Joe’s. I love Sloppy Joe’s. If you ever have a Halloween party you should ask you mom to make them. I think it used to bug my sister that I had to go along when she went to Girl Scouts. I know it bugged her when my mom made us matching outfits. It seemed cool to me to have the same outfit as my big sister. But Ann didn’t like it – dressed for school in the same outfit as her little sister.

My sister gets other stuff too though. Like braces and also she gets hassled by the other kids in her class. The big girls are always telling her she’s too skinny. I don’t like it when the big girls are mean to my sister. I mean, we fight all the time. But she’s my sister and she can be really nice too. One time I got a bad cut on my knee and Ann put a Band-Aid on it for me. She said she was “Nurse Ann.” I think she said that cause our other sister Margie is at nursing school. I didn’t know she misses her as much as I do.

You know what else my sister got? Her license. My parents said if she gets good grades she can drive the car. She said she’ll take me to the mall and we can listen to Elton John and Heart on the radio. My sister Ann loves music. I have a feeling she won’t get motion sickness if she’s driving and I bet she’ll drive pretty fast. Fast as the earth in its orbit with the windows open and the radio up loud.