Happy Birthday, Dylan!

Just a few weeks before I turned 2 years old,
I received my very first "job" and my first little title...
I became a big sister.
The first memory I have of Dylan is from when we were still young
enough to take baths together and one time, he pooped in the tub.
My mom gasped and pulled him out of the water immediately,
leaving me shrieking and flailing in the bathtub as a log floated toward me.
(Thanks, Mom. I see who you liked best.)
My second memory is of a battery-powered fishing game,
where the little plastic fish had hinged jaws and when you held your little
fishing pole over them, they would actually bite down on your bait.
We were fishing when the doorbell rang and mom went to answer it.
Dylan leaned over, said he was a fish, and bit me on the arm so hard that it bled.
But even after he made those two less-than-favorable first impressions,
for as long as I can recall, my brother has been one of my best friends.
As a toddler, he was my dance partner
and we still have the home movies to prove how sweet his dance moves were,
as he twirled me around the kitchen and showed us how to do the robot
while our parents laughed hysterically in the background.
In elementary school he was my fellow explorer as we
packed up our bookbags and headed out into the woods behind our house
and founded a new "town" in one of the clearings.
I owned the town restaurant (we served primarily acorns)
and Dylan ran a furniture business (recliners made of logs are not very comfy).
For one summer in junior high, we shared a room in the basement while our bedrooms
were being remodeled, and we stayed up late and watched TV and
listened to a lot of Avril Lavigne (embarrassing for the both of us).
That summer, we also became obsessed with making our own movies and music videos.
It's okay that the editing on our Kung-Fu movies was sub-par,
(Punch!...wait for it...now the person falls over)
because Dylan's performance in our toilet-humor version of "Blues Clues"
was deserving of an Oscar.
Occasionally, I wished I had a sister, but really, who needs a sister
when your brother looks this good dressed up as a girl for gender-blender day at school?

Today I've been a big sister for 21 years,
and my brother is still one of my favorite people in the world.

Happy 21st Birthday, Dylan! 

I'm sincerely sad I can't be there. I wish plane tickets grew on trees.

If I was there, I would definitely offer to be your chauffeur for the celebrations.

And I would take a ton of embarrassing photos of you to use as future blackmail.

And I would buy you the most disgusting shot I could think of.

(So, perhaps you should be glad I'm not there after all.)

Now, come visit us this summer 

and we'll take you out and buy you a legit drink.