One of the BAD things about having a lot of siblings (specifically, sisters) is that my god they can be annoying. Some days I wanted nothing more than to make Sisters No. 2 and No. 3 completely disappear.
No. 2 would totally cramp my style (yo) and (I'm not even joking about this, this is the extent of the evil) used to CHEW ON MY KEN DOLL'S SHOES SOLELY TO PISS ME OFF. Like really. Just to make me angry. Because then my Ken dolls would have to date Barbie barefoot. Honestly. THOSE SHOES DON'T EVEN TASTE LIKE ANYTHING!!! And she did this when she was EIGHT YEARS OLD, not like when she was teething or anything!!! (Residual annoyance.)
No. 3 can be super grumpy and moody (and still is. She is definitely The Most Feared Person in our family. That accolade doesn't go to our mother, nor our father.... but Sister No. 3. Trust me. You don't want to get on her bad side, and you especially don't want to get on her bad side when she's tired or hungry. Like I'm so scared of her, I actually feel safer putting all of this in brackets, because that way it seems like less chance that she'll see it and get angry at me for saying it).
But Sister No. 4 (and in the interest of keeping my family members straight: I'm Sister No. 1, the eldest, 1 for first and best, all that jazz bla bla)... I don't think I have ever wished that Sister No. 4 would disappear. This has a lot to do with her personality (super mellow) and the fact that I was used as child labour to take care of No. 4 when she was a baby, since somehow (and I'm sure this is the reason parents are always compelled to love their children no matter what) cleaning the poo off a baby's butt pretty much means you are going to forgive them anything. Even when they grow up and officially become an adult.
So this is a post for No. 4. You were born at 12.27am on 14 April 1994, and I didn't need to recheck that time or put that into my phone calendar, because although I have a terrible memory, I still remember reading that time and date on the name tag that the nurse put around your foot after you were born. I picked out your name, because although Umi doesn't believe in checking a baby's sex before they are born, everyone was expecting you to be a boy (based on totally non-scientific things like the way Umi's tummy looked, what she was eating while she was pregnant, and the totally illogical fact that she already had three daughters). But I knew you were going to be a girl (and transform our family into LITTLE WOMEN BY LOUISA MAY ALCOTT! Which was technically true for 6 years until our idyllic Little Women-ness was totally spoiled by the emergence of a baby brother) and I remember poring through baby name books (this was pre-internet times) to find the prettiest, best name for you, eventually landing on a name that means "cantik dan berseri" (all the baby name books we had were in Malay, and I had to ask Abah what berseri meant).
I changed your diapers, bathed you, burped you, carried you around the house when you wouldn't sleep, sang to you (which probably REALLY didn't allow you to sleep), cleaned up your vomit, and when I held you in my lap on car rides (this was also pre-car seat awareness times) you would fall asleep and drool all over my arms, and I would LET you drool all over me because I didn't want to disturb your sleep. You had insane gravity-defying hair that actually grew upwards, like Fido Dido's, before Umi shaved it off, and even though we all laughed at you while you were growing your hair back, you were super cute regardless, and we always got stopped at supermarkets or shops by complete strangers who would tell us that. You used to suck your thumbs, which made your palms smell like mayonnaise, and even though I was kind and mature about it, I distinctly remember Sisters No. 2 and No. 3 running away from you, screaming "EWW MAYONNAISE HANDS!" when you walked towards them, for which I think you should give them shit about forever. We all cheered for you the night you walked for the first time, on the eve of your first birthday, and were so super proud that you took your first steps before you were even one year old (theoretically, that statement is true because you made it by a few hours; most probably because we were all egging you on like crazy).
In one month, it will be your 20th birthday. You are absurdly tall and will probably be 6 feet by the time you finish growing. You study environmental science, which I totally don't understand because yuck, science. You are the quietest out of all of us, but that is probably a survival instinct since you had to live with No. 2 and No. 3 for longer than I did before I went away to university (ha ha) and then after that, had to live with No. 5, our long-awaited, chattiest human being on earth brother. You are the spitting image of Kat Dennings, and no one can figure out how that happened.
But, you should remember that although you may be all those things: you will also, and always, be No. 4 - our drooly, bald, mayonnaise-smelling baby sister.
