Sugar and spice and everything nice, that what little girls are made of...right? Well whoever came up with that sappy line obviously did not know my sister Emma and me. Growing up, we did the sweet hand holding thing only as a break from our WWE level fighting. Somewhere between the spitting, the biting, and the emotional jabs, I happened to pick up a few tricks of the trade. As much as I love to hate her, my older sister has taught me more than any text book or self-righteous college professor. So with that in mind, I give you the "Memoirs of a Little Sister."
Lesson 1: Regardless of how hard you try, you will always live slightly in the shadow of your older sibling. Blonde, blue-eyed, varsity dance team, student body representative ā coming in to high school, I had big shoes to fill. My claim to fame as a freshman was that my sister let me sit in the Senior Horseshoe ā the most highly sought after and exclusive place to eat lunch. Emma showed me the ropes of high school and was sure to let me know any time I did something embarrassing. However, after she graduated, I struggled to shake the extreme precedent she set before me. Even three years after Emma graduated and was well into college, I appeared multiple times in the yearbook dubbed in the caption "Emma Haas." The moral of this little anecdote is as follows: being the younger sibling means you have to work a bit harder to define yourself and pave your own path.
Lesson 2: Sometimes you just have to tell it how it is. If there is anything my sister excels at, it is brutal honesty.
"Don't fill in your eyebrows like that anymore, you look like a cheap Drake knockoff"
"Those had better not be my shoes, you'll stretch them out with your big-ass troll feet"
"I can practically see your entire butt in your Instagram, cover yo ass up you two dollar ho."
Lesson 3: Learn from the mistakes of those who have walked before you. There is nothing like waking up to a 2:00 A.M. call from your sister's drunken ass, locked outside, begging you senseless to let her in. Stumbling downstairs to help her in I would think to myself, "I am never going to drink alcohol ever." Even though that commandment did not quite follow through (sorry mom) I still learned a lot from my sister's drunken escapades. One of the best parts about an older sister, is that she makes virtually every mistake humanly possible. Therefore, you know how to avoid them...or at least the way to control the damage when you inevitably make the same mistake.
Lesson 4: True knowledge should be shared. From teaching me how to curse like a sailor all the way up to what a tampon is for, my sister has taught me almost everything I know today. Whether I want to know or not, she never fails to impart her intensively accumulated wisdom. "Soph, I can't promise to make all your problems go away, but I can promise to put dog sh*t on your ex-boyfriend's car."
Lesson 5: Imitation is the ultimate form of flattery. "What do you wanna be when you grow up?" "My older sister." Growing up, I was a carbon copy of Emma...from clothing, hair style, how she acted and talked, I wanted to be exactly like her. Truthfully, she could have worn a brown paper bag to school and I still would have thought it was a bold fashion statement and tried it out the next day. Hand-me-downs from Emma were like presents on Christmas morning.
Lesson 6: A sister is a lifelong best friend (that you can physically, verbally, and emotionally abuse, of course). Even though I live hundreds of miles apart from my sister, she never ceases to be my greatest support system. From answering my drunk FaceTime calls at one o'clock in the morning, sharing all my articles on Facebook, and personally threatening to drive six hours to beat up any frat boy who does me wrong, my sister would do anything for me. Even though she spent a solid year attempting to convince me that I was an accident, I would not trade my sister in for the world. Regardless of whatever accolades I achieve in life, no title will ever surpass the value I place on being: Emma's little sister.
