The temporary health risks of pig

When discussing my need to write about my family for humor's sake last weekend, my sister inquired as to whether I had any funny stories about her.

At the present time in her life, my sister is funny in a "Holy crap, please don't let that evil near my children" sort of way. You see, she's 15 and is a high school principal's worst nightmare. Her vocabulary when dealing with teachers and other authority figures consists almost exclusively of four letter words. And I don't mean "cute," "nice," and "frog." She makes teachers' ears bleed with shame and does a little crazy moon spasm ritual every time she gets suspended. Or at least I think she does. It could just be some scary-ass dancing, but for her sake, I'm going with spasm ritual. (I didn't have the hypen in scary-ass originally, but scary ass dancing sounds like something else entirely and something that none of you should be picturing my 15 year old sister doing - imaginatons up, please!!!)

However, once upon a time, she was an amusing little creature. She understood smiling to simply mean a facial expression in which ones bears ones teeth. We have many photos of what could either be my sister or a rabid badger. Treasured moments. Especially when she stopped gnawing on the floor.

One of my sisters more memorable quotes came when she was about two years old. Eating was an interesting time for her. She was not always the 100 pound (yeah, you heard me right - the kid's a toothpick. Damn her and her tiny butt!) Taco Bell scarfing fiend that she has grown into. As a child it took her about 36 hours to polish off a meal. Oh, the meal would be off the table in under 15 minutes - no problem. But, you see, my sister would then store the food, half-chewed, in her cheeks like a chipmunk while everyone begged her to please just swallow it so we didn't have to look at the colors seeping out of her anymore.

This, of course, would make her do nothing. Because apparently, her audio nerve was connected to her jaw muscles. We learned this one day when she was sitting in her weird-ass high chair that connected to the table. I never liked that thing. It clamped onto the table, so you didn't need a real high chair once the kid got to a certain age. But it collected food particles like nobody's business. If you wanted to see what my sister ate for the last month, unclamp the chair and look at where the clamp arms had been. And that's about as often as my mother felt the need to clean it. What a sanitary home I was raised in. It's amazing I never showed up at school with cholera.

Anyway, my sister was in her bacteria-infused clamp chair having some food. Her father then began to talk to her. With a straight face and completely serious, she looked up her dad and said, "Daddy, I can't hear you. I have ham in my mouth." What made it so funny was that she said it in a tone of voice that implied he was a complete moron for not understanding how ham affected hearing and should have known better than to speak to her at that moment.

These days she would probably just give him the finger.