The tale of the fighting sisters and two tapes.

I have 2 brothers and one sister. My sister and I are very close now, but growing up, we hated each other most of the time.
We fought constantly. When I say fight, I mean physical violent fights.
Hitting, scratching, hair pulling, biting, kicking, cutting, burning with irons, punching… That kind of fighting.
I have the scars to prove it. One on my belly from a knife cutting incident.


Our biggest fights happened at night. We shared a bed. My sister was big on “her side.” If she felt I was intruding on her side, the fighting would begin. She also had a problem with my foot touching her. So, of course, any chance I could, I’d sneak my fucked up feet on her side and ever so slightly brush it up against her leg. As soon as I would do that, all hell would break loose.
“YOU TOUCHED ME WITH YOUR FOOT, STAY ON YOUR SIDE.”
“I was on my side, you big baby, shutup and go to sleep”
“You were not, you’re doing it on purpose, brat.”
“SHUTUP!”
“Make me”
“I don’t make trash, I burn it…”
Then the hitting would begin. We’d usually end up on the floor, rolling around, scratching, screaming, crying, hitting and spitting until my dad would come in with the belt, wack us both a few times to seperate us and throw us back in our bed.
I remember one night in particular. I touched her with my foot, she kicked me in my gut and it was on.
My dad came in, screaming and grabbed us both by the arm and told us to get out of our bed.
My sister screamed. “She was on MY SIDE.”
He told her to be quiet and for us to sit on the floor and wait for him. We were sure he was going to get his belt and we were in for another beating.
That didn’t happen. Instead, he came in with a measuring tape and a roll of masking tape.
Was he going to tape our mouths shut?
We had no idea.
He threw all of our blankets off and started measuring. He then took the roll of masking tape and rolled it down the middle of our bed.
“THERE!” Exclaimed in his every so fucking hilarious mexican accent.
EVEN STEVEN!!!!!!!!!! You both keep all body parts on your side. If you cross “The Line” you will be in trouble. Now get in bed and if I hear another word…”
We were stunned. As soon as he left the room we gave each other dirty looks, then started busting up. We couldn’t stop laughing. There was a piece of tape down the center of our bed and he said “EVEN STEVEN”.
Now that I am a parent, I can totally appreciate the desperation of that move on my dad’s part. When you’re trying to go to bed and the kids won’t shutup, you get very creative as to how you will fix whatever the problem is that is keeping them up.
I’ve found that threatening to lay on their floor and fart all night, slowly poisoning them with my bodily gases always gets my boys to shut up and go to sleep.
But tape down the middle of the bed? That has to be the greatest one ever.

10 thoughts on “The tale of the fighting sisters and two tapes.

  1. gojou

    Solution courtesy of the Mike Brady School of Parenting. (Except that he didn’t say “Even Steven”…with or without a Mexican accent.)

  2. theresa

    My brother and I had rooms across the hall from each other when we were little. My mom would send us to bed, and we would stay up and talk to each other across the hall. Every so often my mom would yell up the stairs for us to shut up and go to sleep. One night she got so fed up she yelled up the stairs, “I don’t want to hear another peep out of you two for the rest of the night!” My brother and I shut up real quick because we could tell she was pissed. But then 10 seconds later, from across the hall, I hear….”peep”. I thought my mom was going to murder us. But now it’s funny 🙂

  3. LisaC

    My sister and I were like you guys- and she had the sharpest long nails on the planet. I am a messy person and she is very neat. So she used to rake all my mess onto my side of the room. Then Dad decided to separate our rooms using the closets. The door was on my side of the room so I wouldn’t let her in or out half the time!

  4. Laura

    My sister is 11 years older than I am and we shared a bed. My favorite story (not hers) is the time I was about 5 and she was 16. I fell asleep with gum in my mouth and we were both in a cocoon by morning. My Mothers solution was to slather us in peanut butter. Needless to say her hot date was not so hot. She still blames me :-)!

  5. dana michelle

    Shades of me and my sister. Since she was older by 4 years and bigger, she basically did all of the beating, and I did all of the getting hurt. It was like she couldn’t sleep until she had slugged me for some transgression (real or imagined) that I had done. And we shared a 3/4 bed (which is bigger than a twin, but smaller than a double) in a 9×9 room for the first 10 years of my life. I am amazed that I survived.
    We got really close once I grew up, and she’s my best friend now.

  6. ratty

    sharing a bed, gawd… i thought I had it bad because i shared a ROOM with one of my little sisters…
    and i did that tape thing to her 🙂 she was a MASSIVE slob and i was a tidy-ass bitchy oldest sister. i just loved having a line that i could throw all of her things over…, out of my neatness. she was younger, but much tougher than me. when we were fighting, i usually did the ‘punch & ditch’:
    –grab a book (VERY important!)
    –give her one good slug to the kidneys or stomach
    –run into the bathroom and lock the door while she was gasping for air
    –read my book until she got tired of banging on the door. or possibly until i was lulled into a false sense of security, by ‘fake’ peace and quiet, and walked out, only to be trounced.
    sisters 🙂 can’t live with ’em without fighting, couldn’t possibly live without ’em.

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