In the few months that this blog has been in existence, I have dedicated a significant amount of space to discussing the awesomeness of my little sister. She can be really awesome sometimes. Except for all the times that she is not. Saturday night was one of those times.

With our parents out of town for the weekend, we spent the better part of the last couple days trashing their room and making use of the best TV in the house because sometimes lots and lots of junk food and television is an awesome way to spend a weekend and contrary to what my last post may have led you to believe, I can be a good older sibling and would not go shopping for my sister to host a kegger. I have my standards.

How Lion turns out is of particular importance to me because I feel that she is my responsibility. I don’t worry about Derrik because he was Josh’s responsibility and he was kind of a lost cause early on. Lion is mine. Her awesomeness is a source of pride; her lack of it is a source of shame.

So when she agreed to head up Columbia on Saturday to take a break from all the television so that we could go on a hayride and shoot paintballs at zombies in the best Halloween attraction I have ever heard of, I was proud. It’s about a 45 minute drive, but that is well worth it for a haunted house and zombie paint ball. IT’S PAINT BALL WHERE THEY DON’T SHOOT BACK. AND THEY’RE ZOMBIES. AND IT’S AT NIGHT.

We drove up, ate dinner at IHOP like the classy girls we are, and went to the Fear Fest location just outside of town. 10pm on a Saturday two weeks before Halloween was apparently poor timing; it was packed. As we walked to the ticket line from the parking lot, Lion started to freak out a little. Then she started to freak out a lot. She started to panic about not being able to go through the haunted house. While we stood in line she was bouncing around and looking over her shoulder like someone was actually going to stab her at any moment. While we were in the ticket line.

I became more and more annoyed with her pretty much every single time she spoke. I was willing to begrudgingly concede to just going on the hayride even though we drove 45 minutes to get there and were going to have to stand in that line for another 45 minutes. I could come back next weekend with someone else and check out the house itself. I really just wanted to shoot zombies. However, after about five minutes in that line, she looked at me with terror in her eyes and begged to go wait in the car.

What. the. fuck.

No, I did not drive up there so I could stand in a long line by myself and then pay $20 to ride a glorified Disneyland ride by myself. So I stormed back to the car with her. It is entirely possible that I was belligerently yelling at her the entire time. By entirely possible I mean that I totally was but holyfuckingshit I was so angry.

Part of why I was so angry was the realization that this is not the first time the Cowardly Lion has done this to me. Far from it, actually. In fact, when I came ever-so-close to punking out of a particularly unnerving bridge at the City Museum, I looked up and saw her doing it. I knew that there was no way in hell I could refuse to do anything that my chickenshit little sister was willing to do.

When I was in high school we took a family vacation to Orlando. Derrik and I spent a good portion of our time at Islands of Adventure. We went back on our last night in town and Lion begged to go with us. We told her that she could come but she probably wouldn’t want to ride any of the rides we were going on.

My entire family is a gaggle of defiant little shits. Naturally, she insisted that even though she had passed on the big rides all week, she was definitely going on them now.

I don’t know this park well enough to know the names of any of the rides. We went on a Tower-of-Doom-straight-up-and-drop ride and once we started going up, all of her bravado was gone. Her shoe fell off and the terror began to seep in. We told her there was nothing we could do now so she closed her eyes and cried. But after it was over she was suddenly proud of herself for braving it. I’m not sure braving it is an accurate assessment of what happened there, but she was nine. That was impressive in her head.

High on adrenaline, sugar, and being up past her bedtime, she decided that she was willing to go on the last ride with us too (the big roller coaster whose name is not important because I don’t remember it). That is, she would go if she was even tall enough. She stood in front of the sign all nervous and excited and terrified. Sure enough, she just barely cleared it.

Just to recap: we never told her that she had to go. I can point this out because right now I am typing this out as a story that you are reading. You are able to acquire all of the facts because in this setting, I have the opportunity to give them so you can see that we were just kids riding a roller coaster before we went back to school and our boring lives..

Lion was anxious, but filled with every ounce of courage she could muster up. We pulled the harnesses down. And then they locked.

Everyone who has ever ridden a roller coaster is probably familiar with the sound they make when the stoned high school kids who operate the rides lock the harnesses.

Lion did not approve. A second after that clicking noise, she just started screaming. My ear was about six inches away from the source of the horrifying shrieking, but I was barely able to make out the words “LET ME OFF! LET ME OFF! LET ME OFF!” I can’t be sure. It was mostly unintelligible.

I’m strapped into this ride with my sister screaming next to me while I look like some sort of asshole who forced a small child to ride a ride that she didn’t want to go on. Since we were locked into the damn ride, it took the G.E.D. wielding pothead way too fucking long to let us out and of course my sister screamed until well after she was released.

I put up with a lot from her because even though she makes a spectacle out of herself constantly, it is usually either (a) easily ignored if you’re used to it -or- (b) awesome.

This was one of those moments where her spectacle was a bit too much and it became downright humiliating. She was let off the ride and while I wanted to sulk off in shame, Derrik asked if we could still go on the ride. So then I let the sobbing child sit by herself and wait for us, making me look like an ever bigger asshole. I was only 15, so maybe I was completely imagining the judging stares.

Seven years later, I felt that same burning humiliation creeping up on me. This time, it just made me angry. I didn’t even get to shoot zombies.

But while I was saving us gas money by huffing and puffing the car all the way home, I realized the worst part: this one’s mine. In the end, it’s all on me.

Well, shit.