Life with a sibling is always challenging. From getting under each other’s skin to loving each other by the end of the night, there’s no better bond than that of a brother and sister. However cooperating with each other and going more then an hour without fighting is never easy, especially when your big brother makes it his job to drive you up the wall.

Now imagine me ten years ago… a petite little six year old with curly brown hair, a big ol’ gap in my two front teeth, and vast brown eyes.  I was and have always been the mere definition of a “daddy’s girl,” so normally I was used to getting what I wanted when I wanted. All I had to do was give my dad that puppy dog look, you know, that adorably desperate sad face where your lower lip is flipped over and your eyes do all the talking for you, and boom he would give in to my demands. Unfortunately being a “daddy’s girl” didn’t make me a “brothers girl” if that makes any sense.  My big brother Michael, fourteen at the time and the genius of the family, would purposely treat me the exact opposite as my dad did. Anything that I wanted, he would make sure I never got it, sibling love right?
One day Michael peaked my curiosity in a way that bothered me for weeks and weeks straight. Knowing my obsessive interest in money, he told me about this secret stash of his… a stash so thick of bills that you could possibly smell them from a short distance away. Don’t get me wrong I didn’t need the money, I wouldn’t ever spend the money, I just wanted the money, and my desire to have it got stronger every time he told me I would never find it. Michael would never forget to remind me everyday that it was still hidden and out of my reach. Boy did that make me mad, at that point it wasn’t even about his secret stash, it was more personal than that. All I yearned for at that time was to discover any way possible to find that money and somehow use it to really make him angry.
When you are six years old, hobbies are practically obsessions, and a prevalent hobby of mine was reading every Nancy Drew book possible. Nancy Drew, a detective to say the least, used many different types of strategies to obtain her end goals. I remembered reading that sometimes things may be hidden in the most obvious places or even hidden in places prevalent in that person’s life. One day my brother was at baseball practice and it was clearly the perfect opportunity to go on a hunt for his secret stash. I started out in his bathroom opening drawers, spreading towels apart, looking under the carpet, then moved to his room when I was sure I had searched every inch of space. I looked around and thought for a minute. If I were Michael, where would I hide my money so that no one would find it? I looked under the bed… no luck. I looked in the curtains… no luck. I looked above the dresser… and once again no luck. As I thought about my next move, my mom yelled from downstairs that she was leaving to pick Michael up from baseball and would be back in thirty minutes. And then it hit me. Baseball. He must have hid it with his baseball stuff. I searched through his baseball drawers and looked everywhere possible, however the last place I hadn’t looked was his baseball hats. Where were his baseball hats? I glanced around the room for a few short seconds and then caught a stack of baby blue and red caps stacked one on top of the other for the world to see. I ran over picked up the stack of hats and sure enough there it was, Michael’s secret stash.
At this point I knew I didn’t have much longer until my brother and mom got home from practice and I had to act quick. I took the three largest bills, the Benjamin Franklins and ran into my room. Without thinking about the consequences and only thinking about pissing my brother off, I ripped up each bill and ran back into his room and threw all the pieces on his bed.
I sat patiently waiting in my room for him to walk upstairs and see the surprise I left him. I remember hearing his footsteps clump up the wooden stairs as he was climbing up them fairly quick. I was so tense and immediately regretted what I had done. It wasn’t even satisfactory for me anymore because I was so terrified of how my brother would react. Then all of a sudden in the middle of my thoughts I heard an excruciating yell from his room…“Are you kidding me Katherine!”  I immediately started crying and soon after heard him run downstairs to my mom and explain to her exactly what had happened. He was mad. Boy oh boy did I know I messed up. What seemed to be like ten seconds later my mom screamed from downstairs, “Katherine get down here right now!” My face at this point was as red as a cherry and my eyes were so swollen and watery that the trip downstairs was all a blur. As I reached the bottom of the stairs I was given a spanking and yelled at for a good ten minutes. I knew by the look in my mom’s eyes and by the tone of her voice that I will be in deep trouble. I had to apologize for my actions and was sent back to my room for the rest of the night. At that point my brother seemed more upset than mad. As I was running up to my room he called out at me that he hated me and doesn’t ever want to see me again. Only being a little six year old I took that pretty harshly.
After locking myself in my room, about two hours later my mom and dad came in and had a really serious talk with me. They explained to me how money is not a toy and what I did was going to have some serious consequences. Which included somehow getting my brothers three hundred dollars back. They were very upset with me, and very disappointed in my actions however they made it clear that my brother was the one here disappointed at me the most. As they walked out of my room they suggested that I go talk to him and beg for his forgiveness. Terrified of what was going to happen I slowly walked into his room. He was lying on his bed, back facing the door, with headphones in his ear. The once crisp, put together hundred dollars bills were thrown across the floor. I stared at the crumbled, lifeless pieces of paper then walked over to his bed and reached my hand out to tap him on the shoulder. But I just couldn’t do it. I ran out and went straight back into my room slamming the door shut behind me.
For the rest of the night my thoughts ate me alive and after all the self-reflection on my actions, I realized that what I did was more than wrong. It was sinful. So I kneelt by my bed, knees rubbing against the carpet, hands crossed together with my fingers interlocked, and prayed that not only my brother and parents would forgive me but God as well.  I understood that I took my brothers taunting me over his secret stash all to seriously and should have never gone to the extreme that I did. Was money really all that cool? Was it worth all of this mess? Needless to say I didn’t sleep entirely well that night and I knew I had definitely learned from my actions.  All I could do then was trust in God and take my consequences.