I always make fun of my older sister for not having a special talent. Everyone in my family does. I draw and bake. My little brother draws. My younger sister plays the piano and loves writing. My little sister draws and loves writing. But my older sister, she kinda lucked out and I will forever make fun of her for that. But, I make fun of her cause I don’t want her to feel bad. We look so alike that, if I wasn’t around and she was, people would think she was me. I joked that I would let her pretend to be me and take all my classes for a day, except my painting class. The girl can’t draw anything for her life. What’s funny is that I actually learned how to draw from her.

Growing up in a refugee camp with barely nothing, it was so cool that my sister got the privilege of going to a boarding school that Angelina Jolie had so graciously built. She used to go there for about three months straight and came back home for a week to a month, and then she was off again. Her school offered classes most people wouldn’t even dream of, music classes, science classes, math classes and art classes. I was left to go to a school that could barely provide enough seats and materials for students yet she was able to wear a pretty pink uniform to school every day. No hard feelings.

Anyways, she would always come back home with books. The books would be filled with math and science and all these things I didn’t understand. But then, another book would be filled with songs and sketches of flowers all around. I, being a curious nine-year-old, took her books, went to the back of the house and would spend time copying those flowers and songs over and over and over again until I got them to perfection. I used to do this every single time she would come, I would just copy the flowers over and over again, adding my own elements here and there. I would go back to my school and show off to all my friends that I could draw flowers and we would have competitions about whose flowers were better. This, I know, was the beginning of my love for art.

When we moved to the city, my sister had to leave the boarding school and I did not get the chance to ever join her there. But, we moved to a city school and I was forced to sit between two boys, best friends that later became my best friends. Of course, I decided to show off the flowers I could draw. By then, I was able to do different shapes of flowers, small ones, big ones. I could even add a stem to them and make them pretty. Well, it just so happened that the boy who sat to my right, whom I owe as well, was actually a pretty good artist. He could draw Batman like nobody I had ever seen, not that I had ever seen anyone do so before. I begged him to teach me how to do it and he did. He even taught me how to draw Superman!

But, I owe all of this to my sister. I owe her because she, for some unknown reason, lost this artistic talent. I was talking to her the other day and mentioned how she should be ashamed she never developed an individual talent like the rest of the kids in the family did but then I remembered that, if it wasn’t for her, I probably would not have developed my own. She, being the oldest, had different expectations from my parents. So, while I was busy copying the flowers in her books, she was busy studying math and science, and while I was attending painting classes, she was busy applying to college. And I always feel bad that she always started something but had to give them up for me and the rest of my siblings.

I mean, she could at least learn how to draw stick figures!