Happy birthday, Susan!

My little sister turns 24 today... it seems like just a few years ago that she was a little tyke getting into trouble of some sort or another.

Susan is 6 years younger than me. It was enough of an age gap that we didn't really have much in common as we were growing up aside from our family (obviously she's none the worse for wear, as she's grown up to be a smart, interesting person).

Of course, I still looked out for her as all big brothers are apt to do. And Lord, did I need to. Susan had a bad habit of getting seriously hurt as a child. As her birthday gift this year, I'm going to tell you about the many times she ended up in the Emergency Room. Happy Birthday, sis! :)

It started at a very early age, when we were still living in our yellow house on Astoria Crescent (we moved a fair bit through the years).

Susan was the classic younger sibling, always hanging around and mimicking her older - obviously cooler and more intelligent - brother. One day she was following me around as I was climbing on the furniture in our basement... I was climbing on chairs, then walking along a built-in ledge in the wall to another chair. Stupid, I know, but what do you expect from an 8 year old boy?

Susan immiediately wanted to do the same thing, so she started climbing up the chair... she was doing quite well until she slipped. And cracked her head on the ledge. She managed to split her ear open, resulting in 6 or 7 stitches. As far as I know, there's still a Susan-shaped dent in the ledge (it was there when we moved out a few years later).

Her next trip to Emergency happened a couple of months later, when she found some tranquilizers in my folks' dresser when one of the neighbour's kids was babysitting us. Not knowing any better, she thought they were candy and started munching them down. We didn't know what happened until later, when Dad had come home and taken us out for some candy. Susan was just sort of sitting in the back seat, all woozy-like, and wasn't eating her candy. We knew something was wrong. Next thing she knew, she was in Emergency having her stomach pumped.

The next trip was another 'eating what you shouldn't' event. I think it happened when I was sick with something, and mom needed to give me some pills to deal with it (ear infection, most likely... I had a few of those when I was a kid). I'd run out into the garage and hid behind the car (she'll never find me!), and Mom was chasing me around trying to get me to take the pill, leaving Susan to wander about and do what she wanted. For some unknown reason, what she wanted was to chow down on some laundry detergent. We came back in the house to find her sitting on the floor in the laundry room, covered in laundry detergent, caught red-handed stuffing it into her mouth.

Susan managed to wait another year or so for her next emergency room visit. We'd moved by then, to a small rancher on the eastern side of Abbotsford, and I'd made a few friends in the area. We were all goofing off and running around the yard... I'd told Susan to sit on the electrical service box (totally a safe place, with a lot of room for her to stretch out and not get run over by 5 ten-year-old kids). I don't know exactly what happened, or how it happened, but I was suddenly confronted with a screaming, bloody Susan. She'd somehow managed to fall off the electrical service box (a whole 2' high) and crack her head open. Mom rushed her to emergency, where she got yet more stitches. One of the nurses recognized her, and said "Hi Susan!"

Funnily enough, I was fortunate enough to never visit the Emergency Room as a patient in my childhood years -- Susan did it all for me!

The last event wasn't actually an Emergency Room visit, but was much, much scarier. In 1992, my family and I went to Honolulu for vacation... it was a fun trip, and was nice to go somewhere warm in late January.

As part of the trip, we did a drive around Oahu, stopping at some of the tourist traps, and seeing the countryside. At one point, we stopped off at Diamond Head, a relatively famous beach in Oahu. Mom, Dad, and I were just hanging out on the beach, but Susan was running around having as good a time as an 11-year-old girl can have on a beach in Hawaii (which, as it turns out, is quite a good time. wheeeeeeeee). At one point, however, she ran just a little too close to the waterline when a wave was coming....

...and disappeared, as she was pulled under and swept off-shore.

Mom panicked, I panicked, Dad panicked... and five seconds later, another wave came and deposited her back on the beach where she was before. It was the single-freakisest thing I'd ever seen. Susan, a veteran of injury and malady by that point, was completely unphased (though quite wet), but we didn't go back to any other beaches after that point! :)

Now, the 6 year age gap isn't so much of a gap. She's started to become an interesting person over the last few years, and has really done some growing. With me moving to Edmonton, we haven't had much of a chance to get together and really hang out... and I feel a little bad about that.