Turkey Lurkey: Take Two

 I leave the auditorium, walking past my friends. Lauren sidles up alongside me. "What's up with you guys? Why is she avoiding you?" I manage to huff out an irritated response with the least amount of expletives possible. "I really don't know. And at this point, I give up. I don't know what I did, so she's going to have to tell me before we can figure this out. I really don't give a damn anymore." She pauses for a moment, thinking. "That's really bitchy of her. But hey, my friends aren't being great either." Now it's my turn to pause. "How about we get a movie, buy a lot of candy and chips and crap, and have a screw-the-world night?" Her response: "Sounds good to me."

That night was filled with Baked Lays, chocolate, licorice, chocolate, peach tea for me and Arnie Palmer for her, chocolate, chocolate, and Channing Tatum. Thank God for sisters (and for Channing Tatum).

Sometimes she's better at being the big sister. Sure, I'm the one that picks her up from cold football games when he friends are being exclusive and takes her to get chocolate (don't judge me, I'm a girl; chocolate is a girl's best friend when life gets rough), but she is smarter in other ways. Every night she comes down to my room, pops her head in and asks, "What kind of tea do you want in the morning?" This I'm-your-little-sister-but-I'm-also-kind-of-your-big-sister thing has been going on since the beginning of time; I'd come down for breakfast before elementary school and Lauren, little four-year-old Lauren, would look at me and say, "That doesn't match." Sorry for not wearing matching clothes every day of my childhood...but now I go to her when I need a cute first date outfit (or any cute outfit at all). I do not shop for dresses, especially homecoming dresses, without her. I drag her along to Target to buy groceries. The people who work at Heartbreaker know us as "the sisters who come in every couple of months and buy a lot of stuff together." Yup, they know us. But we have our moments when the friendship turns into a relationship of tension and teenage angst - long showers that begin the second I decide I'm going to shower, constantly being late. My father often jokes that he doesn't want to know how long it would take an ugly girl to get ready for school if my sister is attractive and it takes her almost an hour. Me? I just call her high maintenance. When you require a shower before going grocery shopping, I question how concerned you are with your image.

Ever the social butterfly, Lauren spends most of her days connected to the worldwide web. If you see her without her phone or iPod in hand, you'd better call an ambulance; she might die of shock. If she doesn't, my parents will when they see her. It's normal for me to come up from the basement and see her on the computer, GoogleDocs homework "in progress," iPod in hand as she stalks Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, phone buzzing the entire time. Thanksgiving wasn't much different; when we weren't competing in tic-tac-toe on the tablecloth or keeping Mom sane helping with food prep, the kid was stuck to her phone.  I even have proof. Sure, she looks borderline possessed, but when you spend that much time "connected" to the rest of the world, are you really human?

We also have our jokes. After all, the kid's a dork. We play off of each other, throwing songs and words out, going back and forth as our mom shakes her head at our obnoxious giggles brought on by stick drawings or funny words. Lauren accidentally wrote our address on one line instead of two for her audition form, so we spent the next twenty minutes doubled over in laughter as we tried to find the weirdest, most obscure towns in the United States to fill in for where she lives. While Spunky Puddle, Ohio, seemed like a good choice, she ended up choosing Ynot, Montana, as our current place of residence.

Dear Progressive commercials, you inspire us. This is now a constant phrase in our household :)

In the end, we're dorks together. My sister is a piece of my childhood that won't go away, and I like it that way. She keeps me sane and always laughing. We've gotten closer this year than we have in the past, and it's weird to think I'll be at college next year while she's trying to find someone to drive her constantly late butt to school. There's nothing I can hold back from her, and she's become my confidante. After all, you can kid the world, but you can't kid your sister.