The Hawkeye

I very rarely fight with my older sister. She's my big sis after all, and while I used to love driving her insane when we were younger, those days are gone, replaced with best friendship and a kind of bond that can only grow between sisters.

But when we do fight? You best believe, we give it our all.

When I was a sophomore in college, I met a guy, Jason, one random weekend while I was back home. He was very cute, very funny, and very mine. But there was a catch: I had a boyfriend. A high school beau, who I'd been with for years and with whom I'd made a very dramatic "nothing can break us up" pact when we left for higher learning. But since that pact, well more importantly, since I'd seen what other boys were running the earth outside my little suburb, I had been itching for someone new. This is where Jason came into the story. All 6'1 of him. He had caramel colored skin, fresh corn rows (it was 2001) to match his fresh Timbs, and just enough arrogance to drive me batty. I was only in town for a couple weeks, so we went on as many dates as possible. Disclaimer: I am an asshole for cheating on my then boyfriend. But it was all very innocent. We never did anything more than the classic necking. We talked for hours, he was the starting cornerback for the University of Iowa, heading into his senior year, a sociology major to boot. He was perfect! I couldn't let a little snag like a boyfriend keep me from my perfect happily ever after!

Well apparently that wasn't the hitch in my getalong after all. Fast forward a few months, I'm back at school, as is he. We talk all the time, keep in major touch, and figure out when I'm going to fly to Iowa to watch the Hawkeyes kick some ass. But eventually, the distance became a bit too much...as did my boyfriend (sigh, I was young and dumb, okay?!), so Jason and I cut ties. He'd call me every once in a while to check on me, I'd keep an eye on his team's season. It was actually my first amicable breakup, the kind where you genuinely want to be friends.

Towards the end of the year, I was talking to my sister on the phone. Before the land of little handheld PDAs, you couldn't check your email from the car, and my sister needed an address stashed in her email. She gave me her password and I checked it for her. Case closed. A few hours after our conversation ended, I was chatting with another mutual friend of ours, Robbie. Robbie and I were talking about boys, of course, when she said to me, "So, have you and your sister talked yet?" I said yes, thinking somehow Robbie knew about the email/address situation. Taking my ascent, Robbie then probed further, asking how I was so okay with my sister dating Jason, wasn't I awfully calm?"

Wait, what? My sister was dating Jason? My sister even knew Jason?

Well, it turned out she knew him quite well. This damn world is so small that a friend of my sister introduced her to his cousin, a senior football player at Iowa. Jason was home for some reason or another, and apparently my sister and him took to each other instantly. Surprise, surprise. And I didn't find this out from a worried-for-spilling-the-beans-Robbie. I learned it from going back into my sister's email and finding out all the gory details.

Oh, I was anything but calm. I steamed, I burned, I ripped her a new one and swore I'd never speak to her again if she didn't cease and assist. And do you know what this girl responded with? "You read my emails!?" she screamed. That was beside the stupid point! She betrayed me! As far as I was concerned, she deserved to have her emails read. She lied! I had to find the truth somehow. We yelled at each other a while longer and eventually one of us hung up on the other. I'd like to think it was me. That was it. I was done. She was dead to me! It was all very dramatic.

It is the one and only time I've gone without talking to my sister for longer than a week. It dragged through the summer, into the fall, Thanksgiving. I'd shove by her in the house, send messages through our little sister at the dinner table- "Can you tell her to pass me the peas?" I didn't buy her presents for Christmas and when my mother finally had enough, she pulled us in the den and told us this was ridiculous. We were sisters and couldn't let a dumb boy come between us. But that's exactly what we planned to do, so my mother made us scream it out in that den. We weren't allowed to leave until we were best friends again or dead from killing each other, whichever came first.

She's still my best friend and I think Jason got some girl pregnant in Iowa. Figures.

That bitch stole my line,

xoxo

Blackie Collins