Penny Stock

When did you grow up?

So for the past month or so almost every time I have called my sister between the hours of 5 and 10 pm (and all day sunday) my almost 12 1/2 year old niece answers the phone and either sighs loudly as she gets off of call waiting or tells me that her mother (my sister) will call me back when she (my niece) is off the phone. The amount of times my sister actually gets these messages is few and far between (I feel like that sentence completely didn't work grammatically but I am too tired to figure it out).

What is crazy is that when my sister and I were growing up we shared a phone line. You'd think that since there were only two of us, it wouldn't be too difficult to make or receive phone calls. You'd be wrong. When you are the younger sister (by 4 1/2 years) there is virtually no chance that you will ever get any phone time.

I used to come in to school to find my outraged friends who told me that they called me 3-4 times the night before but my sister wouldn't get off the phone. My friends knew enough not to call me on my parents' line because "we didn't give you your own phone line for your friends to still be calling on ours!" I remember sitting outside my sister's room just waiting and waiting and waiting for her to get off of the phone with whoever was her flavor of the week at the time (Can you tell I am reliving bitter memories?)- and she wondered why I knew everything that was going on in her life- well that and I read all her mail and diaries.

Anyway, I am rambling. But the point of my post is this. I don't know when my niece grew up. When did she stop being that cute little kid who wanted to go to Baskin Robbins with me? When did she start monopolizing the phone? My niece is reminding me strangely of my sister as a teenager. And the worst thing is that I am the one suffering again!