(I get off work at night, and want to pick up something quick for dinner. I put an order in online at a restaurant chain that closes in a half-hour, and I’m on my way over to the restaurant when I get a text from my sister.)

Sister: “Do you want me to pick up your to-go order?”

(I have not told my sister about my takeout plans, nor have I shared my rewards account info with her.)

Me: “Huh?”

Sister: “Your to-go order from [Restaurant].”

Me: “How do you know?”

(Then, I get a call from my sister.)

Sister: “I was waiting for my to-go order and I saw [My First Initial, Our Last Name] pop up on the screen.”

Me: “Didn’t you think it was yours, just misspelled?”

Sister: “Or maybe it was [Cousin]’s order.”

(We have a very unusual last name, but yes, somehow my sister and I had the same idea that night of going to the same restaurant within a few minutes. I was only a couple blocks away when we spoke so I picked up my own food. Sure enough, I saw her at home with the same restaurant’s bag.)

(My cousin likes to force her five-year-old son to conform to some high standard of a perfect little boy like you’d see in a magazine and doesn’t allow him to actually act like a small child. We like to instill a little whimsy in him whenever she’s not around. We’re currently taking him to a street fair, and my sister finds a dandelion that’s turned to puff.)

Sister: “Look! If you see a dandelion that looks like that, you can make a wish and blow on it, and it’ll carry your wish into the sky!”

(He excitedly blows on it ,and we continue walking. He sees the prettiest fall leaf — the first of the season — on the sidewalk, and excitedly picks it up.)

Cousin: “My wish came true!”

(He had a smile on his face for the rest of the day.)

(We are at my aunt’s house and there has been a blackout. My aunt turns on a battery-powered light in the kitchen, and my sister and cousin start making shadow puppets with it.)

Sister: *holds up two fingers in front of the light* “Look, a bunny!”

Cousin: *holds up her whole hand in front of the light* “Look, a turkey!”

Aunt: *picks up her coffee pot and holds it in the light* “Look, a coffee pot!”

(This takes place via email.)

Me: “Dear Sis, I need to enter the checks for our business in the spreadsheet. When you get the mail, please take a picture of the checks and email it to me.”

Sister: “Here you go!”

Me: “Um, Sis, a photograph of the sealed envelopes isn’t any use to me. I need things like the check number, who wrote it, and the amount. Please open the envelopes and take pictures of the checks themselves, then send them to me.”

Sister: “Oh! I didn’t know that’s what you wanted.”

My sister has never been a good cook; this has simply become a fact of life. These are a few of the stories that have come up over the years.

When I was about seven and she was around eleven, we decided to do something nice for our parents. We grabbed the cook book and found dinner and drink recipes to make one night: chicken pot pie and quality punch. My parents bought the supplies for us, and we got to work. Halfway through preparing the punch, we started to realize there was a lot of it. We looked at the recipe a little closer… It read, “quantity punch.”

My sister made brownies, but switched the oil with high fructose corn syrup. When we ate them, they were extra chewy, and she wouldn’t eat them because the eggs were questionable.

She tried to boil water, and a fire started. She calmly went to our parents’ room and woke Mom up, saying, “Fire,” as if nothing was wrong. My mom, dazed from just being woken up, had to have my sister repeat the statement three times, and only on the third did my sister emphasize it as if something was horribly wrong. The house didn’t burn down, though!

My sister went off to college, and in her second year, she was made an RA (resident advisor). They put her through all sorts of training, including what to do in case of fire. Halfway through the year, we got a call from her about how she was microwaving a cookie at the dorm, and it caught fire. She panicked, and her neighbor had to come over and put the fire out because she knew what to do when a fire happened with someone else, but not for her own room.