Yes.

(Source: lilpinkelectricchair)

(Source: sc4bbers)

I spent the last few days with my two younger sisters, Grace and Maria, both of whom were home from college for the weekend.

Maria is the youngest. She’s 19. I don’t think she was ever grounded in high school. She was too busy leading spiritual retreats. She drinks responsibly, saves her money, is studying something sensible and business-related in college. Sometimes she gives the reading at my parents’ church. She’s a good kid.

This is not about Maria.

It’s about Grace, the middle child, 22. Grace is different. She’s loud, careless, too trusting of strangers, not wary enough of her surroundings. She’s a handful. She’s a tornado. She leaves her wallet at the bar and someone always returns it. She gets black out drunk and someone walks her home. She butt-dials the guy she’s been seeing, leaving him a voicemail of her talking about him shallowly, and he thinks it’s funny! During one of her high school basketball games, the recording of the national anthem started skipping, so Grace, with her less than mediocre voice stepped right up and sang the whole thing. And everyone LOVED it. “That Grace, she’s such a riot!” She’s a hot mess but we ALL love her. We forgive her mistakes before she’s even finished making them. She’s beautiful and hilarious and charismatic. She doesn’t give a shit what anyone thinks. She’s Ferris goddamn Bueller.

This weekend Grace and Maria came to pick me up and bring me home to my parents’ house Saturday afternoon. We had started Friday night at my apartment but had all gone our separate ways to spend the night with our respective friend groups. Grace showed up Saturday looking defeated. Yes. She had lost her wallet. Again. She lost it two weeks ago at school, and had just finished getting a new driver’s license and debit card upon getting back to Chicago Thursday afternoon. How was she going to explain this to Mom and Dad (whose credit card had been in her wallet)? Why did she keep doing this!?, she wondered, laying on my couch, hungover and ashamed. Maria and I just shook our heads. We’d seen this before. We knew what was coming.

On the drive to my parents’ house, Grace was in the middle of a speech about how she deserved this. How every time she lost her wallet, someone always found it for her. And this was just karma. It was bound to happen sooner or later. It was impossible that everything would keep working out for her. The world couldn’t keep allowing her to be so careless.

Just then (I mean it! Right in the middle of this speech!) Maria gets a text from one of Grace’s friends. “Tell Grace her wallet is at the bar. Everything’s there”. And it was at this moment that I realized that I am Jennifer fucking Grey. Because I was kind of pissed!

How can she skate through life with such reckless abandon? How come when I leave my wallet at the bar, I wake up to find $200 missing in my bank account? It’s not fair.

I have been worrying lately about what will happen when Grace graduates college this May. I am worried about it in the most asshole possible way. I’m worried that Grace will get a great job and immediately be more successful than me. I’ll still be toiling away as a lame-ass legal secretary, trying to figure out what the hell I’m doing with my life, and she’ll be trying to pay for my dinner without totally crushing my ego.  I’m a bitch, right? I’m Ferris Bueller’s jealous, vengeful sister Jeanie. 

I mean, I’m not THAT bad. I love my sister very much. I’m less angry with her and more disappointed in the world’s indifference to my hard work (and, honestly, “hard work” is probably a debatable phrase).  I’m the responsible one! Why won’t anyone bend over backwards to help MEEEEEEEEEEEE?

Barf.

But, despite my newfound understanding of her raging lust for “justice”, I don’t want to be Jeanie Bueller.

I want to be happy for my sister.  I want to cheer her on when she get’s up in front of a crowd and shamelessly entertains everyone. I want her to find every wallet she drunkenly, carelessly loses.

So I lent Grace 10 bucks for gas to drive back to the bar she was at the night before, and when my parents asked where Grace had disappeared to, I said she was “running errands”.

Jennifer Grey & Charlie Sheen at the jail in Ferris Bueller:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H19uKs99vIw

Sign me up for this.

(Source: theinfiniteblue)