The Wildchild

my sister can be a real douche sometimes.  and i mean that. for reals.

i come from a typical asian family, which means my mom rules the household and that she's extremely overprotective. it used to frustrate and bug me to no end in middle school when i would ask to go over to a friend's house after school or for dinner or a sleepover. the usual response was, "why? why do you want to go to someone else's house? is our house not good enough?" such a frustrating discussion. 

and it would be even more frustrating when, before i could get the requisite permission, i had to obtain a myriad of information about the friend, his/her parents, and a time-blocked itinerary/ agenda.  however, as i got older, some of these requirements fell away as my mom became more accustomed to my requests and the friends i was requesting to see became familiar names.

with the advent of cellphones, i got more freedom. even then, the initial stages were cumbersome e.g. designated times to call home and a constant alert to always be able to answer my phone (the consequences of not answering it would lead to my mother in hysterics and an hour-long scolding when i returned home).  but as with all rules, once you prove that you can be trusted to abide by them, you're no longer required to do so. for the most part, i still abided by them because they afforded me more freedom. as long as i followed them, my midnight curfew could be extended to 3 am or an overnight at a friend's house.

the key was to demonstrate that i could follow the rules and requirements.

my younger sister, on the other hand, doesn't seem to understand this concept. 

she complains and complains about how my mom stifles her by constantly checking up on her and not letting her go out or attend things with her friends. however, let's look at her track record to get the big picture:

scenario 1: my mom requires my sister call her when she gets home after school. occasionally, my mom will then call back at a later hour to make sure my sister is still at home and hasn't snuck out before my mom gets home from work. of course my sister gets busted: she was going home after school and calling our mom, then forwarding all house calls to her cellphone so she could go out and still answer the phone if our mom called and pretend that she was at home.

scenario 2: our parents go away to Taiwan for their first vacation away from the house over Christmas and New Year's. so my sister decides to throw a house party. the cops come to bust up the party due to noise complaints (not to mention the underage drinking. but i'm from a lax italian/jewish suburb. since they know most of the families in town, they often let kids go with a warning). i get a frantic call from my sister at 1 a.m. but miss it since i'm out myself (i had called earlier at midnight to wish her happy new year. yeah, no disclosure that she was having a party at our parents' house-instead she claims she's at a party at her friend's house). so busted.

scenario 3: i decide to not disclose her indiscretion to our parents but sternly warn her that she needs to scrub the house down from top to bottom if she doesn't want to get caught. i arrive home the following weekend to be welcomed by the stale smell of cheap beer (yes, it smells different) and cigarettes, sticky hardwood floors, and random crushed cans of Busch under furniture and other places (but still in relatively plain sight). busted again.

scenario 4: i come home for Thanksgiving early and the first thing i'm greeted by is the smell of my sister engaging in an activity that is sanctioned by the state of California but not the federal government. busted. i've actually told her time and again not to engage in this and other smelly activities in the house due to the risk factor. she can take her indiscretion to the garage or the backyard. i mean really, let's use some common sense.  
as a side note, i find out from my cousins that my sister spends all her time at college instagram-ing pictures of her new bong, dime and quarter bags of skunk, and other activities that you would never want evidence or proof of. ::face palm:: i already ran into and addressed this issue when she started her tumblr and inferred/implied all her sexual ::shudder at the thought:: escapades. 

and then we come upon her latest antic.  i get a call from my mother asking me about a concert my sister wants to go to at (and i'm quoting her) "some Western hall." really, she means Webster Hall but when i try to correct her, she tells me i'm wrong. regardless, my mom leaves it up to me to get the details from my sister about the concert and assess whether or not it's appropriate to let her go. so i get the requisite details and do a solid for my sister by recommending to our mother that she be allowed to attend her concert.

cut to the night of the concert: i get frantic phone calls from our mother at 10:30 saying my sister's not answering her phone and hasn't called our mother since 8 pm (when the concert allegedly started). of course, i have no answer for her since concert venues NEVER tell you when concerts end, only when they start. now i'm the one in a pickle since i'm the one that sanctioned her alleged attendance at the concert (i am saying alleged because with my sister there's no guarantee she actually attended this concert. she may have just picked a real event and claimed she was going in order to go to some orgy-marijuana-other drugs-fest).

sigh, i only wish i could train my sister as easily as this:



The Office - Pavlov's dog from Rauno Villberg on Vimeo.