Weenies

When we were teens, it seemed that my sister Betsy and I did not co-exist on the same planet. I was the more sociable one who found contentment in sports, choir and yearbook staff. She was the introvert, the artist, the book worm, the animal lover. We were outright opposites, oil and vinegar, who unfortunately never became close. No late night heart-to-hearts. No seeking fashion or boyfriend counsel. No mutual friends. Even after a lifetime of our father's job in the military uprooting our family every two or three years, rather than learning to rely on each other for companionship, we sadly preferred to remain autonomous of one another.

It was my senior year in high school when Betsy had a swaybacked roan named Eddie Fox. Dad was retired and worked as a corporate pilot for an oil company. Mother was a CPA who worked long hours. I had inherited our grandfather's rusty '74 Datsun B210, so it became my daily chore to ferry Betsy to and from the boarding stable. I was also needed to haul bales of hay and sweet feed from the tack store. However, I was no cowgirl, and I loathed the responsibility of driving to the outskirts of town where the country air hummed of cicadas and the distant sounds of Navy trainer props performing touch-and-goes. I had little patience many a warm evening at dusk, for my unwilling involvement in the care of Eddie Fox took me away from my own little world.

I carried a great deal of resentment about many things in my life then, so it seemed a small miracle when Betsy and I discovered during our daily commute to nowhere and back that we shared a common delight. Tucked beneath a highway overpass was a Der Weinerschitzel hot dog stand. Once in awhile, we would take a brief detour there on our way home, and something I had never expected happened. Sitting at the picnic tables outside, where we learned that it is impossible to eat a chili cheese dog without making a mess, we shared snippets of our lives. Der Weinerschnitzel turned out to be neutral territory where conflict and rivalry just dissipated. It was the first time I reckoned that Betsy was more than just my kid sister.

Imagine my disappointment years later when she pointed out that hotdogs are made of "lips and assholes." Some things are just better left unsaid.