The summer of 1987 was a fantastic one for me. I had just tuned 10, which of course made me a man, a man who wore smurf underpants, but a man nonetheless. I spent all my free time fishing, and riding my bike with my all time best friend Pat. Best of all my little brother Jeremy stayed far away from me, as any three year old with a sense of what danger is, should.

The only thing I didn’t like about that summer was the fact that we couldn’t go camping because my Mom was going to have another baby. Good lord, another monster to break my trucks and chew on my GI Joes. The doctors all said I was going to have a baby brother, but Mom kept buying all pink girly clothes. She said she knew she would have a girl because it was going to be born on her grandmother’s birthday…whatever that meant. The doctors said that the baby would have to be born earlier because it was getting too big, so on June 24^th, a whole nineteen days before the original due date, my Mom went in to the hospital so they could make the baby come absent.

This is the part that really makes me wonder about the health care providers at Sacred Heart Hospital. At exactly 3:15 pm my baby sister was born premature. Not only had they gotten the gender wrong, but they also made her come out way too early.

By the time I finally got to see my little sister, I had missed my entire TV line up, though I was only upset about missing "Roseanne", "Cheers", and of course "The teenage mutant ninja turtles". It wouldn’t have mattered anyway, because my Grandpa was watching some news break that seemed to last forever. It was all about India invading Pakistan, something I could care less about as it had nothing to do with ninjas or radioactive turtles fighting crime. My mom named my little sister Megan after a character in the Thorn Birds, a movie she watched over and over, and over while she was pregnant.

My baby sister didn’t cry as often as Jeremy had, but when she did let loose, watch out. Her scream could shatter glass; lucky for me I had Metallica’s song "The small hours", which I could blare as loud as my speakers would go.

Having a little sister wasn’t so bad; having a little brother, granted not my favorite species, was tolerable. The two together drove me up the wall. As soon as she could talk, she was taking his side in every argument even though I let her brush my hair a thousand times. Undoubtedly she was a brat, as most babies of the family are, but she’s growing out of it. We hope by the time she’s sixteen she’ll stop whining when someone else wants to use the computer.

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