Sibling Argument

(In which “abusive” and “irresponsible” needs to be defined for my younger sister.)

***

It was a lazy day. I woke up at eleven in the morning and had lunch. I watched SOP Rules while waiting for 4PM when I was supposed to go out and chat with someone over the internet. Then the clock stroke 3:30. I decided to wait for some more time before preparing to leave. After a moment, I saw my younger sister sneaking inside the house, careful not to wake up the dog as she entered. Everyone in the house knows it would be “rumble time” if Doggie wakes up. But she failed. And in the minutes that followed, Doggie was barking his lungs out to welcome the newcomer, eager as hell to get a hug.

After that cute encounter between young master and beast, my sister turned to me and asked, “Have you finished the paper works I’ve assigned you?” in a manner that made me look like a secretary being questioned by her boss. And the paper works she mentioned referred to the research project she needs for her vocal recital.

“Yes, I did.” I answered, like how a responsible secretary does it – minus the “Ma’am.”

“Okay,” she said and went upstairs to change her clothes. When she came back, she handed me some papers.

“What are these?” I asked.

“”Well, you’ve finished doing the research for the foreign composers’ biography and some information about their works. Now you have to do the same thing for Filipino composers and their works. I’ve photocopied some information from encyclopedia. Use them as reference. But don’t copy the exact words.”

“What? Are you serious? This isn’t an easy job –“

“I need it now. I’ll type it when I get back to the dormitory tonight.”

“I can just send it to your e-mail tomorrow. Besides, I need to go out in fifteen minutes.”

“That’s easy. You can finish it in no time! Wait. You’re going out on a date? Hmmm… I can ask Papa’s permission for you.”

“I’m not going out on a date. And this is not an easy job. If you really believe it’s really easy then I guess you can do it by yourself.”

“That was my idea. But my professor reminded me not to copy it in verbatim so I decided to have you do it.”

“You could have just told me to do it this morning!”

“But you were sleeping! What do you expect me to do?”

“You used to wake me up just to ask me where my facial wash is! Did you really think I would appreciate your respect for my sleeping time in this situation?”

Silence.

So I started scanning the biographies and song information and I couldn’t help but get enraged. Hey, with all those music jargons and stuffs, who wouldn’t? Not to mention you’re being rushed to understand and summarize all those?

But I managed to start writing some paragraphs only to be more angered by the complexity of the next pages. “This is insane,” I whispered angrily.

My sister noticed my apparent irritability and said, “Fine! I’ll do it! You can leave now. Go!”

I didn’t. And then after that, what? I’ll be the bad girl? No way. So I tried my best to finish it but failed to write something about one female composer. I gave up. I went to my room and fell on my bed, my head spinning like crazy. It felt like I just came out of an Algebra class. I checked the time and it’s already 5:10PM. Aaaarrrggghhhh!!!!

Then I fell asleep. Damn, I was so tired.

I was awakened when I heard someone walking up the stairs. I opened my eyes and saw Mama standing outside my door. She was holding a bag of food. I instantly noticed that it’s a bag of my favorite pancit palabok!

"From your sister,” she said.

***Sunday February 22, 2009***