the imaginary sister

Dedicated to the real sister :)

Being an only child for ever so long, (almost 5 years), all I wanted really badly was a sister. Am I to be blamed here? My aunts used to have tonnes of fun with each other, and 2 of my best childhood friends happened to be sisters!

And then she was born! I guess I forgot to ask my parents for a walking, talking sister... not a baby.Being someone witha somewhat wild imagination... (I blame it here on the lonely years), one day (after she started talking and walking) when my mom was doing some spring cleaning, I decided to 'entertain' my sister with a story.

See, what happened was, mom brought out this bag with a "melbourne" tag on it... (think someone got it for her from there). Being 6+ at that time I obviously could not pronounce the word 'melbourne' but read it as 'malboro' (definately more pronouncable!). And then the wild imagination began...

I told my sis, (naive lil' thing) that we once had a sister called Malboro (elder sister) who went to live in Australia, and that the bag belonged to her once and she left it at home before she left. (there was also a whole lot of other stuff that I told her but can't seem to remember them now - apparently she can't remember them too)

Anyway she believed that we had another sister until someone had told her otherwise (I think!). Well, that killed our imaginary sister (though her memory remains till today... I fashioned her after my mom's cousin, whom I thought was very pretty), but a real sister is better than an imaginary one anyway.

The cool part is that Geetz remembers this story till today. (She was only 1 at that time) Must've been pretty convincing, huh?