When I was young, maybe seven or eight, my  Sister hit me in the head with a hammer. (Stop it. Stop giggling. It does NOT explain everything.) I don’t remember why she hit me—there are a lot of things I didn’t remember for a while after that, such as my name and most of the third grade. Another time I was playing cowboys and indigenous peoples with the same sister. She was the sheriff, and I was the bad Comanche horse thief. My sister, also judge and jury, decreed all horse thieves should be hung, so she threw a rope over the top of the clothesline to serve as a gallows.

When Mom finally cut me down, I was a half-inch taller and missing a few Brain cells from oxygen deprivation. (I think they were the brain cells that had to do with geometry, because in high school I found I had a big blank spot in that area of my brain.)

Keep in mind it was my NICE sister who did this. My oldest sister was the mean one. She would have hit me with a hammer too. It just would have been a sledge hammer, and I wouldn’t have thought she needed a reason, a slow Wednesday would have been enough. (After getting hit with the hammer, I vaguely recall laying on the ground in a bed of soft clouds. Mom stood over me looking concerned that my younger brother might have to step in to fulfill the duties of the oldest son, when my mean sister picked up the hammer and asked Mom if, since I was already down there, she could have a whack at me, too—the memory might just have been from the blow, because I also remember various glowing blue ducks and a lavender elf named Peako.) When I played with my mean sister the only thing that was guaranteed was eventually a freak accident—wink, wink—would befall me.

Mean sister: I don’t know what happened, Mom. He was just walking along and fell into that pile of barbed-wire. You know how clumsy he is.

Me (screaming): She pushed me!

Mean sister: Don’t listen to him. Remember the hammer and the hanging? I think he has brain damage.

Mom (sighing): Go run and get the wire cutters, again. What is it? Three times this week?

Mean sister: Four, and once in the rose bushes.

My mean sister didn’t want to kill me. She just wanted me to suffer. We didn’t play French Revolution, and she never built a guillotine, but we often played chiropractor. I’m still amazed at what an efficient rack she could make from a couple pulleys and an old ironing board. Mom would eventually hear me hollering and release me, then she’d go find my younger brother to see if he was at least smart enough not to willingly get on a homemade torture device.

The point of this—yes, there is a point—is recently we have heard about all the men in Hollywood and politics who routinely have abused and disrespected women. What they needed when they were younger were older sisters. They teach you to respect the opposite sex at a young age. Sometimes they teach a raw fear of the opposite sex.

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