Younger Siblings That Talk Back

Sometimes, I just start craving Indian food.

Or Chinese food. Or Thai food. Or Japanese food. Even though I come from a racial background that's European-Jewish-Slavic aka ethnic white (and yes that is a thing and no I'm not making it up), sometimes I feel, deep down, that I'm actually an Asian. Especially when I start craving all sorts of Asian-y food. Like Indian food.

So the other day, I decided to take a break from homework and to go to an Indian restaurant for a little while, maybe an hour or so. At first I was just going to go by myself, but then The Neediness overcame me.

The Neediness is a sensation of acute loneliness. Acute loneliness meaning not the kind of loneliness you feel when you want someone to hang out with, but more of a feeling that if you don't find someone to hang out with, you're going to be alone forever. So you surround yourself with people as often as possible and have psychologically scarring dreams about going alone to the grocery store.

You know what's almost as bad as going to the grocery store when you have The Neediness? Going to an Indian restaurant.

Even though my sisters and I have the same parents, for some reason they don't feel the whole Asian thing, just the European-Jewish-Slav thing. To my sisters, going to an Indian restaurant seems both like a terrible waste of money and downright repellant. Therefore, to stave off The Neediness's effects on my homework-weary soul, I had to exert all my persuasive capabilities to convince Little Sister and Baby Sister to accompany me to lunch.

"The lunch special is only ten dollars," I wheedled, "and to save money you guys can just have water, and maybe some naan bread. You'll like naan bread, it's really-"

At which point my sisters burst out into fits of hysterical laughter.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: What? What did I say?

SISTERS: Naan bread. Non-bread! Bwahaha!

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Naan bread. N-A-A-N. It's Indian. Not non-bread-

SISTERS: BAHAHA!

We ended up going for Italian.

A few days later, when I got home from a grueling day at school, I saw that as part of her redecoration project my mother had placed a mirror just inside the front door.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Oh no!

BABY SISTER: What?

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: This mirror. My face is the last thing I want to look at right when I get home.

BABY SISTER: Then look at your face last.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.

These are just two brief incidents in a recent outbreak of younger sibling insubordination.

I don't know if it's that Older Sister has been gone for so long or what, but the younger siblings seem to have forgotten their place in the sibling hierarchy. I mean, okay. If I was going to give my family a fake last name for this blog I would give them the fake last name of Obnoxious. And aside from having a reputation of bursting out into song and being able to reference obscure Jim Henson productions, part of being an Obnoxious is being, well, obnoxious.

However. My younger siblings are getting to be too much, even for Obnoxiouses. They seem to have forgotten that you never, ever talk back to your older siblings. Talking back to parents, teachers, church leaders--that's not such a big deal. But older siblings, particularly your awesome older sister? Unacceptable.

Hopefully when Older Sister gets back from her mission, she can whip these little rebels into shape. Otherwise, they're just going to get further and further from the unspoken rules of society, until they end up as high school dropouts who live under a bridge and eat newspapers for breakfast.

Either way, I predict Baby Brother will prove unsalvageable. His level of sauciness far outweighs his number of years.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Baby Brother. Don't put so much butter on your roll. You're going to get a heart attack and die.

BABY BROTHER: But everybody dies.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: *involuntary facial twitch*

BABY BROTHER: Well they do.

I hope Baby Brother doesn't turn out to have the Asian strain in his blood. There's precious little Indian food under a bridge.