It's true. Two female siblings from the same parents, raised in the same household with the same values, can remember things differently and/or go in different directions in life, to the effect that they tend to gaslight each other--lovingly, of course, but still with some amount of teasing about who is right and who is wrong.
As it happens, I have an older sister. She is 79, and I am 74. That's a difference of a mere five years, yet we span two separate generation labels. I am a Baby Boomer. She is pre-Baby Boom. She grew up with Elvis. I was more into folk music and the Beatles. As kids, we fought like...well...like sisters. She was married and raising a family when I was still in junior high school, so we missed some of the important things--she because she was busy being a wife and mother, and I because I was a teenager. In short, we weren't close as kids. As adults, we are tight as thieves. Confidantes. There isn't much that we don't know about each other. We both know things about each other and our families that we don't divulge to anyone, because that's what sisters do. Still, there are ways that we gaslight each other--in jest, I believe--but with a grain of truth to everything.
For example, my sister was the firstborn child/grandchild of the family. I have this theory, with evidence, that she got all of the "good genes", and I got the leftovers. (Not sure what our younger brother got. He passed before we had a chance to talk about DNA with him.) *Shari (my sister), has a full, non-gray head of hair. My hair was prematurely gray and thinned out early in life to reveal all kinds of bald spots. *Shari is petite and cute; I am average height and plain. *Shari doesn't have high cholesterol, even though she slathers major butter on everything; I watch my fats, but still have to take a statin drug for cholesterol. She does not. *Shari always looks like she just stepped out of the dry cleaners. She irons clothes and has a big wardrobe of trendy clothing and shoes. I go for comfort; thus, I usually look like the stereotype of a homeless bag lady. *Shari is a "looker". She takes care of her appearance. I am the recipient of comments like, "I bet you were a looker in your day." (Isn't that special!?) *Although Shari is older than I, if anyone looks at us side by side, he/she would guess that I am the eldest. But who's counting??
I freely confess that I never wanted to be like my sister; I just wanted to look like her. She was popular with the fellas. I was just a tomboy. Still, I had our mom save a couple of my sister's special dresses so I could wear them "someday". It didn't happen. Shari and I simply aren't built the same, but I can still see a couple of those dresses in my mind.
Flash forward to now. Shari's husband of 55 years died in 2016, of the complications of dementia. She had done absolutely everything possible to keep him home and provided for, until he became too sick for her to tackle alone. To her absolute credit, he was so far gone that he didn't last all that long in the hospital where he was being treated for complications of his condition. After he passed, I told her that she wouldn't be "on the market" long if she sought companionship, because she is cute and capable and still spry for her age. She assured me that she flat-out wasn't looking for love. And then along came Jim. The rest is history. I truly have never seen her quite this happy!
Okay...on to the gaslighting.
Shari and I have running jokes about things...things that drive us both nutsy. Here are some of the gaslighting issues:
1. Shari insists that our mother never put mustard in her potato salad (which was to die for). I insist that she did. I mean, Shari left home at 18. I stuck around longer. I learned to make potato salad from Mom. How else would I have known to put mustard in the potato salad dressing??
2. I put onion in tuna salad, egg salad, and in deviled eggs. Shari doesn't and claims that onions have no business in those. I claim that they don't taste right without onions. Who wins?? When I'm at her house, I eat what she serves. I guess when she's at mine, she will eat my offerings!
3. Shari has a habit of opening the refrigerator and/or freezer door to get something out, etc., and keeps the door open the whole time. We aren't talking a few seconds here. We are talking about 30-60 seconds, during which all of the cold air is running out of the appliance. One day at her last visit (a week or so ago), she opened the fridge door, then went to another room for a bit and walked right past the open door on her return without closing it. Argh! Drives me crazy!
4. I'm a slower driver than my sister. When she's driving on my turf, I try to give directions in time to make things happen appropriately; still, my dear sister approaches cars too close and too fast for my liking. Visit before last, she missed a turn (probably my fault) and performed a U-turn in the middle of US 40 in the center of town. Yikes! I was terrified. She just thinks I'm silly.
5. There are things I have had to look up to determine who is right. We had an on-going discussion about "dry measure" vs. "liquid measure". She insisted they were different. I had never observed a difference. Turns out, there is no difference in amount. I win!
While setting a holiday table, Shari was setting the knives next to the dishes with the blade facing the plate. I had always been taught that the blade needed to face away from the plate. Had to look it up. I won again!
The latest one is something I had never heard of. I had a half-gallon of expired milk and a half-gallon of unexpired milk in the fridge. The expired milk was close to the REAL expiration: a week after the expiration date on the carton. Shari took the expired milk out, shook it, and declared it was still good because shaking it created bubbles. I have no sense of smell, so just sniffing it wouldn't work for me, but because she declared it was still usable, I used it. Put it and a stick of butter in the microwave to soften it up before putting in cooked macaroni and cheesy sprinkles. (Kraft.) Thank goodness I did that before adding the macaroni and cheese sauce mix. After 30 seconds in the microwave, the butter had softened, but the milk had curdled. Neither of us liked the looks of that, so we tried again with another stick of butter and the unexpired milk. Success! So much for the bubbling milk test!
I get no pleasure out of being right. (Well, maybe just a little.) But I am fascinated by how two sisters raised in the same household can be so different. Thank God, Shari and I agree on politics. We can still be sisters! Ya know, she and I know the best and worst of each other, but we still accept who/what we are. I think Mom would be so proud!
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