My Sister

My Sister: Comical
I know someone who provokes me to laughter, real laughter, the kind that makes my sides hurt, my eyes water, and my voice shake because she is simply hilarious. She is my sister.
My sister’s essence is comical. She is “a person whose behavior elicits laughter” as the dictionary states it. Her overriding behavior at home, at church, with friends, in public, and even in her sleep is comical. I do not mean that her only character is comical. It is the most vivid.
She provokes me to laughter each time she displays her minuscule vocabulary. Her favorite phrase for every occurrence is, “That’s retarded!” or “What a retard.” Depending on the circumstances, this phrase has many meanings. Nevertheless, her response is the same from scorn to ecstasy. The actual meaning of the word “retarded’ is to drag or slow down. If I were not her sister, I would never know what she meant at any given time. The meanings of the word in her mind are so vast.
At home, my sister is most herself, most her own laughing nature. Even though there are times when sulkiness will surface, laughter quickly dims it. Humor is always pushing to the surface of her being.
At church, my sister is slightly more serious, but her cheerfulness and laughter are more distinct because beneath the surface any sulking pushes deeper. No matter her mood beforehand, she is always cheerful at the end of the service. Yet it is a content cheerfulness.
Every time I walk past her with a collection of friends, I hear phrases like, “Fail” and “That’s retarded” and “What a retard.” To be sure, she only displays her infinitesimal terminology. I once challenged her to abstain from saying the word “retard” for one day. Hah! (i.f.) She failed. In the course of three hours, she had said it seventeen times.
In public, her comical character is not nearly as pronounced, but it still shows through frequently. It is her nature. As hard as she tries, she cannot clear those phrases from her speech.
The phrases she mumbles in her sleep are most amusing. One night she said, “Are you kidding me? Are you serious me?” In the middle of the night when everything was quiet, a voice on the other side of the room suddenly hollered, “Are you serious me?” I couldn’t help but laugh.
In truth, I must admit that I resemble her. I look at her and see myself. Our personalities are incredibly similar (she probably disagrees with me). All we have to do is look at each other and we know what the other is thinking. My vocabulary includes the same words with just as many meanings, but I claim to have a better—if not larger—vocabulary. I claim a slightly more serious disposition.