Bruises, Phones, And JohnoVision

I sometimes have panic attacks about my children.
I have two boys, and there is a 6 year age difference between them, and though my youngest is still a newborn, I fear what life will be like when he gets older and can pick a fight with his big brother. I myself have never had a brother, but I have had a sister, and let me tell you, fights between siblings when they're the same sex can get pretty fucked up. Boy or girl.

I remember this one fight when I was nine and my sister was five. We were finally allowed to stay home after school, but I had the added responsibility of 'babysitting' my sister, which I promptly shoved in her face as soon as we had stepped in the house. I continued this tirade of me being the more 'responsible' one, her being the baby, our parents not trusting her alone, her being scared of her own closet so how could she stay home alone?, etc. She in turn (because she's five and has the mental capacity to release stress like a FIVE year old people) started throwing things at me. Dolls, lego, her pudding spoon... so I, with my not so best judgement, first tried to use my excellent negotiation skills, yelling that I'd lock her out of the house,I'd cut off all her hair when she was sleeping, I'd rip all the heads off her Barbies, to which a look of horror came into in her eyes, and she whispered "you're not serious" So I, kvelling in the fact that I might finally have won the fight, yelled triumphantly, (the best Freudian slip Id ever had till I was 15)  "I'm sooooo Not serious!" to which my sister started laughing, so I did the only other thing I could think of that would shut her up; I slapped her. Which of course escalated into a huge fight with us both screaming and crying and slapping and pulling hair, and then she threatened to call mom home. Which is capital punishment I'll have you know, So me being the genius, ran and unplugged the Main phone in the kitchen. But my sister, being the clever kid she was, ran to my parents room where the only other phone was in the house, slammed the door shut and locked it. Well I though I was going to get in mondo trouble, so I started banging on the door and screaming, "It's NOT my faaauuult!!!!.bang. MOM!!!.bang. It's NOT MY FAAAAAAUUUUULT!!!!!!.bang. AAGGH, I'm going to KILL you!" BANG. And my sister , on her one final moment of glory, opened the door, looked me in the eye, and said "you suck at babysitting".
And then she threw the phone at me.
So, one broken phone, a giant goose egg over my eye, and an episode of JohnoVision later, My mom comes home. None the wiser about our fight of course, cuz my sister thought it would be a better idea to damage MY VISION than to rat me out. which is, of course, what sisters are for. After that first big episode, we had a few more broken phones, as well as other objects-around-the-house, though none of them hit their mark as cleanly as the first.


This incident in particular, as well as a few others, sticks out in my head when I think about how life will be in a few years. That, and when my eldest gets excited over the time he'll finally get to babysit his little brother.