From the first day I can remember, I was always a sinister little brother to Aundrea, my older sister. Any time I got the chance to do something even the least bit malicious to Drea, I would. I was never sure why I was mean to Drea; I just was, and to this day I am still not completely sure what my goals were in my never ending attempts to inflict pain and/or emotional stress on my sister throughout the first few years of my life. Rubber band fights, name calling, punching, hair pulling, shin kicking, and whatever else came to mind was done without hesitation or remorse. One possible explanation is that I had never received any punishment or atonement for my dastardly deeds. This was due in part to my mother, in whose eyes I was an innocent little boy who was morally incapable of doing such things to my loving sister. To add to that, my dad knew I did those things, but could not punish me for them because my mother had always protected me. After all, I was her little angel of a child. Five years into my life and my unruliness had reached its peak; I believed that rules did not apply to me and that I was above the law. All that changed on the day my beloved, caring, adoring, saint of a sister beat the living crap out of me.

It was your average day in our residence. Cookie, our dog, was running around barking at a cat that had been sitting on the edge of the street outside, but had been gone for about 5 minutes yet I still insisted that ‘Kitty’ was still there even though it could not be seen. Daren, our neighbor, who also happens to own a landscaping business, was outside trimming his already perfectly cut lawn so not a single blade of grass would be any taller, shorter, or uneven from the rest. Because it was a weekend and we had not gone out for groceries since the previous weekend, my mother had decided to go to the store alone that day while dad stayed at home and worked on something in the garage - probably another shelf for the closet in my room. This left me alone upstairs, where I would supposedly stay to watch TV for the hour till mother got home. I could do that, but why watch a boring rerun of Bugs Bunny when I had a rival in the other room waiting to be ambushed? Drea had been in the kitchen for some time now and after 30 minutes of Elmer Fudd saying, ‘That silly wabbit,’ I had decided that it was about time that I do something diabolical. After all, it’s not like I would get in trouble. Even if I did get caught and punished, that only meant I would be spending 10 or 15 minuets of my day jumping on the couch, a.k.a. ‘time out’.
So, ‘What should I do?” I thought to myself as I sat in front of the TV. I couldn’t just walk up to her and kick her in the shin, that would be too abrupt and I had already done that yesterday. It wouldn’t carry the same satisfaction as it did the day before. No, this needed to be more imaginative, more thought out and planned. A snappy insult like ‘dumb head’ or ‘monkey butt’ might be good, but she had grown into a habit of ignoring me so those insults had much less of an impact than they used to. It was at this point in the thought process that a marvelously sinister idea dawned on me; I had been playing with rubber bands earlier that day when my friend from across the street had come over. We had a rubber band fight after he taught me how to flick them at targets, like cans, dogs, TV characters, and - most important of all - other people. All I had to do now was find the rubber bands, stuff a few in my pocket and begin the assult. So I retrieved my can of rubber bands from my closet upstairs and proceeded to head back downstairs for the kitchen. All I had to do was find my target and fire away. Drea was in the kitchen, a difficult place to attack an enemy due in part to the various amounts of cover she could quickly flee to, such as under the table, behind the island, and in the pantry. Because I had such a vast number of rubber bands in my pocket and was not expecting any type of retaliation from my overly passive sister, I figured I needn’t worry about location, even if I didn’t hit my target I would be satisfied with interrupting her work. I then crept into the kitchen and without further hesitation, I let fly the first band.
Before the first one hit, I fired two more in quick succession. In my 4 or 5 hours of practice I had become quite proficient. I was shooting her with rubber bands faster than any western gunslinger in existence, at least that’s what it felt like to me. Fifteen seconds into the surprise attack I was having a blast, though I couldn’t say the same for Drea. She had cried out for Dad, but he was in the garage and couldn’t lend Drea his assistance, so I continued to fling band after band at her. But all was not well, something about Drea’s demeanor had changed, she was no longer allowing me to attack her, Drea had stopped running and now turned towards me, beginning to advance. This was a revelation of sorts; never had Drea attempted to confront me. What could she be planning? Once she reached me I had no idea what was about to happen, yet I quickly found out. Drea shoved me into the ground, jumped on top of me, and began to punch me repeatedly. The first hit didn’t hurt at all; I was too busy running the scenario through my head, wondering what caused my angelic sister to do such a thing. My dad had appeared on the top of the steps moments later and witnessed the scene. Salvation seemed to be soon at hand. Having known instinctively what had occurred prior to his arrival, he simply looked my sister in the eye and said something I will never forget, “Hit him again.” And so she hit me again, then looked to him for further instruction. “Keep hitting him,” he said emotionlessly, then Dad simply turned around and walked back down the steps leaving Drea to do her bidding. After four or five more punches she got up and left without saying a word. Drea didn’t need to say anything for I deserved every blow, and in my own opinion she didn’t hit me nearly enough to compensate for every time she had just ignored me when I hurt her. Instead of retaliate, Drea had always just tried to convince herself that I wasn’t as mean as I seemed, that everything I did was normal. I know now, just as I knew then that she did not beat me up with malevolent interests, she merely taught me a lesson in the only way I could understand it, and she taught me well.

This was one of the first life changing events of my life and I will never forget it. After that day I was never malevolent towards Drea again. Not only did I become an exponentially better brother to Aundrea, I became much nicer to everyone. I also began to obey my parents without being told twice, and I began to show respect to those around me. After that brief encounter I essentially became the perfect little brother. Although some people might think that I would dislike Aundrea or despise my father for allowing her to continue punching me, I believe that it was a necessary action and that I would be an entirely different person today had it not been for that day.