My sister breaks things.

It’s a fact—a family fact.

She doesn’t just break ordinary things like you or I might do; dishes, glassware, bones in our body, no. My sister breaks things like, the internet.

What? Oh, okay, so maybe it wasn’t her, per se, who caused Google to have a nervous breakdown the other day, thereby causing everyone one on the planet to collectively hold their breathes. But we, that is, our family, on hearing of another Google outage immediately think, Sis! Yes, we actually text and or messaged one other asking, did she do it, did she break Google, again?

You see, my sister has this knack, put her within 3 feet of a remote handset and you can guarantee it, and any programme you might have set to record will either start in the middle, end before it’s supposed to, record another channel entirely, doesn’t record because it set itself to another century from now, or simply doesn’t work.

We have no idea why, let alone the ‘how,’ but it happens. She goes through fancy watches like you and I might go through hot dinners. Digital? Forget it. The thing might work out of the box—for a week, and then stop. Or she manages to somehow cause the digital display to go haywire. I’ve seen it.

Microwaves? Not much better. Strangely enough, she has yet to break the fridge. We’re working on that one. Factoring it into the equation, throws it for a loop. Why one appliance, but not another? Why a digital alarm clock but not an old fashioned wind-up one?

Brother Number One reckons my parents dropped her on her head as a child. My sister gives a good evil eye. Brother Number Three thinks she was struck by lightning as a kid and, thereby, has been electrically discharging ever since. Brother Number Four is still doing the calculations and has yet to come to a conclusion demanding more verifiable evidence. But, as we all know, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. 

These things are abstract and, in a lot of cases, just her proximity to something can force the issue and blame assigned without anyone knowing the exact nature or details of the occurrence, such is the mystic that has grown up around my sister’s seemingly innate ability.

I’m sure someone, somewhere out there in the scientific community knows what I’m talking about, and would love to study her at length. But hey, good luck with that. You’ll need to do it without instrumentation, mechanical or otherwise, because as sure as my sister is my sister, she’ll break or f*ck up your equipment.

As kids, her freakish nature was fun but, as adults? Not so much. Invite over to dinner? Maybe. But just clear the room before hand, and under no circumstances let her into the kitchen.

Oh, hi sis, what? What am I writing about? I’m writing about you … no, no, don’t touch that …