Hidemi Woods

My sister won the first prize of a local poem contest for elementary
school students. Her poem appeared in the local paper and many people
read it. The title was ‘My Mean Big Sister’. Back then, every time she
saw my face, her habit was to say ‘Play with me!’ As I liked to spend
time alone, it had been an endless torment. Her continuous play-with-me
chant would often drive me crazy and I tried to escape from her as much
as I could. Her poem described how coldly I snubbed her whenever she
felt happy to see me at home, and that was highly praised. To
congratulate her, I told her that she owed me for this prize because if I
had been nice to her, her poem wouldn’t have existed, and added that my
meanness proved right and so I would try harder. Needless to say, she
got on the verge of crying and ran straight to my mother as usual to
tell on me…