Living With Heather: A Most Interesting Title

I’ve been going through some old files recently. I came across this Freshman college comp paper that I wrote about my sister when I was seventeen. It clearly is one of my first forays into the kind of writing I do, but nevertheless, it makes me cringe. I want so very badly to correct all the things I see wrong (i.e. the things that don’t even make sense), but I’ll leave it right here.

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Living With Heather

My sister Heather has always been somewhat laid-back.  I think I've only seen her get really angry about three times in the sixteen years I've known her, and she was so quiet about it, I was the only one who knew she was about to explode.  But she never does.  Explode, I mean.  She leaves that to me.

We may be sisters, and very close sisters, at that, but we're about as alike as bacon and eggs.  She's so quiet I barely know what she's thinking half the time, while everyone knows how I'm feeling.  Mom and Dad have to pry information out of her, while I volunteer everything I know.  She's light complexioned; I'm dark.  Her taste in clothes is pretty easy-going, with all-American jeans, T-shirts, and jackets.  My style is more classic.  Heather smiles easily, has a lot of friends, and makes new ones with little effort.  Guys ask her out more, notice her more, and fawn over her more.  I, however, have only a handful of friends and have never been a social butterfly.  She's tall; I'm average.  She's younger; I'm older.

In spite of all our differences, Heather and I are closer to each other than anyone else.  Our minds are practically joined at the hip, so to speak.  There's not much we disagree on, except for one thing...

I don't know how anyone can live in a place where they have to wade through piles of debris, but Heather does with a certain flair and seems to like it.  Whereas I keep my room meticulous, she only cleans hers when the piles get knee deep and she can't find her favorite pair of earrings.  Then, in a fit of motivation, she picks up a few things here and there and puts several things away until she finds her earrings and has a clear path to the bathroom.  There's one thing not everyone knows, though.  Heather's room may look clean, but just wait until you open her closet door or peek under the bed.

Let's start with the closet.  It sits in a far, dimly lit corner of the room.  The door gapes open ninety percent of the time, although that's no fault of Heather's.  The doorknob fell off one day--just fell off for no apparent reason at all.  When the door is open, her things cascade out in a flurry of color.  On the top shelf, there are extra blankets, maps, board games, and plastic sacks from Wal-Mart perched precariously, almost ready to fall out.  She has plenty of wire hangers tangled and twisted together, but few clothes actually hanging on them.

The floor of Heather's closet is the stuff nightmares are made of.  Sooner or later, everything ends up there.  Everything that is not hung up, put away, or washed begins a new life in the piles of her closet.  Great stacks of dirty socks, torn jeans, and musty shirts reign; one false move and it's Fibber McGee's infamous closet revisisted.  Although Heather is the proud owner of a lovely, green clothes hamper, there is not much in it. 

The things that my sister can't stash in her closet, she shoves into her dresser drawers, stuffs into the pigeonholes of her desk, crams under her bed, or just leaves laying around for effect.  There are magazines that Mom has been looking for for weeks.  There are stacks of old letters and ink pens that have been broken but never thrown away.  One tennis shoe may be placed neatly beside the bed, but its mate is nowhere to be seen.  A dripping pair of pantyhose hangs from the curtainrod.  Her hair dryer is tossed underneath her desk, the putrid smell of burnt filaments pervading every corner of the room.  On her alarm clock sits a disgusting, soggy, chewed piece of gum that she is saving for later. 

The most amusing aspect of Heather's room, however, is her bed.  On the surface, it's an ordinary-looking bed, with white fluffy pillows and a green and white comforter.  But looks are deceiving.  The underneath of that bed is the center of bedroom society.  Crammed underneath are various assortments of pop cans, old homework, our little brothers' Legos, and old, forgotten Barbie dolls.  She's a packrat!

Her bed also has another flaw, one that is a constant source of irritation to her as well as me.  It clanks.  No one knows how or why, but it does.  No matter how she sleeps, or even if she just brushes by the bed, it clanks away.  Every once in a while, she will get fed up with it, crawl underneath there with a screwdriver and bang around for a few minutes, muttering death threats under her breath if that rotten bed clanks even once.  I think it must hear her, because when she's finished, it is cautiously silent.  Smugly, she will tell the family, "My days of trouble with that bed are over."  Because our rooms are right next to each other, I'm the only one who hears the clank immediately start up again the instant she climbs into bed that night.

Sometimes, when I'm lying in bed trying to sleep, I hear Heather's poor bed go clank...clank...clank in the night.  It makes me wonder,  "Is it the spots on the 7UP cans roaming around under there?  Or possibly Ken and Barbie coming to life?"

But there's more: in another corner of her room is a small, woven wastebasket.  Despite what you may be thinking right now, Heather uses it quite diligently.  Whether or not the trash actually lands in the trash basket is not the issue.  She just picks it up the next time she is in the general area or the next time her room gets "cleaned." 

The strangest thing about Heather's bedroom, though, is that no matter how much her room may resemble a pigsty, her bed is always impeccably made.  Every morning, while the rest of her room is in glorious disarray, each pillow is in place and the comforter is drawn tightly over the bed.  Some mornings, there are even hospital corners on the sheets. 

It has always baffled me why someone who lives amid chaos and confusion would bother to make her bed each morning.  Heather, however, doesn't see what all the fuss is about.  "At least my room has a cozy, lived-in atmosphere," she tells me coldly.  "Your room could be a hospital for all the comfort it offers.  Your furniture actually repels dust it's so antiseptically clean.  So shut up." 

I think perhaps that this is the only thing Heather and I really disagree on.  From time to time, I wonder where I went wrong.  But since my little sister has turned out to be so sweet and easy-going, I have begun to think that this issue may be a trifling thing to squabble about.

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P.S. Heather is a wonderful housekeeper these days. Her house runs like a Swiss watch.