Big Brothers Big Sisters, in a fit of profound misjudgement, have foisted a hapless thirteen- year-old girl onto me for some heavy duty mentoring . Inga is finally a Big Sister, mothabitches!
For confidentiality purposes, I’ll call my Little Sister Katy. And she is little. Well, petite. So petite that sometimes I forget she’s actually a teenager and has been through more upheavals in her thirteen years than I have in twenty-nine and a half. I sometimes catch myself talking to her like a little kid, and give myself a mental smack. Thirteen-year-olds are just tiny grown ups in puberty stricken bodies, dontcha know.
We’ve had a few play-dates together, and while she never acts particularly thrilled to see or hear from me, she always tries to make me stay a little bit longer, and makes me confirm a time to come see her next. It makes me feel extraordinarily good. She doesn’t say much, but out of the corner of my eye I always catch her scrutinizing the hell out of me, looking at my hair, face, clothes, body – and I really wonder what she’s thinking. Probably “who does this lady think she is and why does she smell like tequila?”
The whole thing is equally intimidating and gratifying. On one hand I’m terrified of doing or saying something wrong, and my brain goes into overdrive with the effort to behave impeccably when I’m with her. On the other hand, the BBBS staff have an amazing knack for building confidence and making me feel like I can do no wrong. Sometimes when I call my co-ordinator for a chat, I hang up feeling like the Vatican’s about to contact me for beatification. Saint Inga of the Smirnoff.
On top of that, her real big sister loaned me the entire DVD set of Charmed. I knew I did this for a reason.
Step Into The Light 
Saint Inga of the Smirnoff. Yep, that has a certain ring to it. Good for you, big sister. When you’re finished there you can come and big sister me. Mrs Snowy says I never did grow up. Don’t forget the Smirnoff…
Cheers, Snowy. Smirnoff? Now THAT’S the kind of big sistering I’m good at.
There’s been an awful lot of Smirnoff circulating in this blog neighbourhood recently.
Hope you write regularly about your big sister adventures because it’s such a worthwhile project for everyone involved.
I think Snowy might have mistaken ‘big sister’ for ‘grog courier’. 🙂
I was under the impression that ‘big sister’ and ‘grog courier’ were synonymous. Oops.
Just be yourself Inga and it’ll be fine. Teenagers don’t want impeccable, they want honest down to earth stuff.
I’m trying to be myself, minus the myself that swears too much and makes inappropriate comments about hot men.
29 and 2/3’s …
Glad to hear they found someone for you to mentor … and that’s a sentence that needs to be re-read to be believed!
As Jane said, you’ll be fine as yourself.
I think it’ll be a learning experience for both of us! And there’s ‘myself’, and ‘PG13 myself’…the latter is a tough one to keep in place sometimes.
Tequila *always* takes the edge off that good-role-model crap. At least it does when we’re talking to preschoolers at our local libraries. 😉
I’m in awe, girlfriend. I wish more people would do stuff like this. I rememeber all my mentors from when I was a preteen. I tried to be cool around them but to me they were and still are, big time movie stars.
Kee
Kee to you too! 😉 I’m sure if you have the tequila to the kiddies as well, it would make it fun for everyone.
Ooh, I like the thought of being a movie star to someone! I just get so many warm fuzzies out of the whole deal, I’m not sure which of us is reaping more benefits out of the whole deal.
(Kee is short for Keep up the good work. Or alternately, WordPress is a big ol’ jerkbrain. 😉
“Thirteen-year-olds are just tiny grown ups in puberty stricken bodies, dontcha know.”
It is amazing how many folk forget this, Inga.
GOF founding a Church. You becoming a Saint. The world is certainly looking up and not just for “Little Sister Katy.”.
Maybe this is what the Mayans were foreseeing when they decided the world would end in 2012…