Posts Tagged ‘sister’
My sister isn’t quite three-and-a-half years younger than I am, though whenever I think of that, I can’t help but feel as if we’re closer in age than that. After all, she’s in college. I just got out.
For her own reasons, she decided to attend my alma mater. I’m not sure why she chose the same college I did, though I speculate that her justifications weren’t all that different from my own.
I chose Fresno State because, at the time, it was relatively cheap, it was easy to get into and, as an afterthought, because it had a pretty great marching band. Depending on who you ask, it still does.
I’m not sure whether or not to be flattered that, in some part, she’s following in my footsteps. She joined the marching band, full of too many old acquaintances to count. Her room is in my old dorm, even if she’s on the other side of the building. Her ARD is my first ex-girlfriend.
I only worry because, years ago, she had made a habit of following in my footsteps. The way Dad tells it, my sister was my biggest fan back when we were both in the single-digits, and it didn’t stop until she hit adolescence. I’d hate to think that we’re falling back on old habits — among other things, college is about piecing together self-sufficiency, not about throwing it out.
Even if she did choose my alma mater for the sake of following in my footsteps, the argument is moot. She’s there now, and, God willing, she’ll earn her degree sometime during Obama’s re-election campaign.
For her own good, I should be and will be letting her make her own decisions. I can only hope that she makes more friends, burns fewer bridges and earns better grades than I did.
I imagine the adults in our lives feel the same way.
My friends, even those already out of college one way or another, tend to complain about the stress begat by the complexity of and varying degrees of warmth in interpersonal relationships. They call it drama.
I heard someone complain about drama at that dinner I wrote about a few days ago. Another youngster, this one a recent high school graduate, plays the second french horn part in our veteran’s band, but when he starts playing for his college marching band, he’s decided that he wants to switch instruments from french horn equivalent, the mellophone.
This isn’t a big issue, prima facie. French horn seems to be the kind of instrument that band players switch to in the first place because there are never enough players to cover all the parts, especially at the lower echelons of wind ensembles. Instead, what bothered me was his motive.
He doesn’t want to switch instruments, but not because he doesn’t like playing the mellophone, though I would understand if he didn’t. He wants to switch instruments because of the legendary drama of the Fresno State Marching Band’s mellophone section. I thought that this was misguided.
Those bothered by interpersonal stress are usually those who consistently concern themselves with the petty gossip of the day. As this petty gossip makes its rounds from one person — she’s pregnant with whose kid? — to another — he said I was pregnant with whose kid? — gossiping itself creates an infinite feedback loop of headache-tacular proportions.
It’s pretty easy to cure drama sickness. All it takes is to ignore what that piccolo is doing with the first trumpet, and how drunk the sousaphone players get before picture day. Once you stop caring about everyone else’s details, your life will be a lot easier.
I feel the need to bore our freshman mellophone player with all that explanation, when I could say the same thing in nine words: There is only as much drama as you acknowledge.
I hope he takes that to heart. Maybe he’ll switch from mellophone for the right reasons.
