Under the Wire

One of life’s great mysteries is how a father and mother can produce two children and have them be so different. I also wonder how some couples had a particular child and even wanted to chance having another like the first one, but that is a whole different story.

Each of you probably can think of examples of two siblings being as different as night and day. One is outgoing and funny, the other shy and serious. One is very athletic while their brother or sister is not. Same mother. Same father. Two total opposites. One is really charming and intelligent, the other a total ditz. OK, now I’m talking about my younger sister and me.

Before you condemn me for talking about my loving little sister, let me explain a few things. She and I agree on this. We just don’t agree on which one is the genius and which one forgot to stop at the brain department when being issued a body. We have continued this debate, our own version of “Mom likes me best,” since I began using big words at age three and she learned to dress herself at eight or nine.

I think the doctor dropped her on her head, probably from fright, when she was born. She in turn, maintains gypsies left me out in the barn for obvious reasons. My parents raised me, along with a blind calf and a crippled lamb, out of pity. My mother refuses to admit to the doctor story but I just know my sister is weird. Here’s proof.

Recently, Pamela, the name she was assigned after the shocked doctor picked her up off the delivery room floor, returned home indignant from her local Wally World. “It’s a lie,” she kept saying. “False advertising, there’s no way they could know for sure, “ she fumed. Finally, we got her calmed down enough to ask what she was talking about.

“They’ve got a sign on a big pile of fertilizer bags over there. The sign says “genuine steer manure” she spouted indignantly. A little confused, I had to ask, “OK. So what’s the problem?”

“How do they know it’s STEER manure?” she huffed. “Isn’t there any heifer manure in it? And what about bull manure. How do they sort it, anyway? What happens to the rest? Are they shipping the heifer manure to Japan? And what about the bull’s ‘contribution.’ There should be a big sign on a pile somewhere that says ‘BS.’”

“Besides,” she went on, “steers are sterile. Why would they want to only sell fertilizer from sterile animals?”

Pam raved on about misleading the public into thinking there were ranchers out there just raising steers. “Yep, looks like we’ll have a good set of steers born this year. Those steers we kept for the breeding herd sure produce good steers, all right. Should be a bumper crop of manure for Wally World in the fall.” The public is already confused about where their food comes from. Now they’re lying to folks about their lawn fertilizer, too.

Eventually, we got my sister calmed down by promising her when we heard of a BS protest we would be sure she knew about it. Anyway, I pointed out, I know they have a way to sort it. How else could all that B.S. wind up in Washington? That seemed to calm her down.

Boy, my parents sure raised a weird kid. We are so different!