My Sister and How she Foiled the Bad Guy.

For Flashback Friday the theme was T-shirts and I don't have any photos of lairy shirts to share. But seeing as how my little sister is about to celebrate her birthday I thought I would share a little flashback about her.

When Mum was visiting at the start of this week we had a discussion about travelling to school. Fixit and I elected to send Climber to a school that is 'out of area', and therefore he is chauffeured like a little prince every morning; but even if we lived round the corner I would still be escorting him from our front door to the schoolyard. I would not be letting him walk or ride on his own, not yet anyway. Whereas Mum thinks that her parents never took her to school, and from an early age she was negotiating trams and buses to travel to the Catholic school several miles away. My sister and brother and I fell somewhere between these 2 extremes.

Canberra, being a planned city, was full of bike paths and underpasses so in theory you could ride or walk to school in complete safety, without ever having to cross a road. Possibly the next time they plan Canberra they will rethink the underpasses as they became a really good place to smoke cigarettes or take drugs or beat people up; this was also true of the city's massive stormwater drains.

Anyway, one day while she was still in Primary School my sister was coming home from school with her little friend Nancy. And Bronnie can patch up the holes in my story if she pops by the comment box but I think they were stopped (possibly in an underpass) by a Bad Man. And he wanted Nancy. So he tried to get rid of Bronnie and repeatedly told her to go away. But she had a gut instinct about him so she stood her ground and Would Not Leave Her Friend. And I suppose the Bad Man gave up after a while, or maybe a passerby came past, but Bronnie and Nancy made it home safe and sound. And when the parents heard the tale, the police were called, and I remember them coming to our house to interview Bronnie, and turns out she'd been able to describe the man well enough for the police to be able to catch him. One less child m0le$ter on the streets, thanks to My Sister.

She's good like that. Probably the most loyal person I know. Strong-minded. (We used to call that stubbornness). Sometimes her life is difficult, with her diabetic child and the juggling of relationship, motherhood, work and following her dreams. But she's always there toughing it out and doing what she thinks is right.

Happy Birthday Bronwen. Keep up the good work! I love you.