I was born first. My sister was born second. I weighed a whopping seven pounds and something. She weighed six pounds and something. Together, we were really something, at least according to our grandparents.

We were born eleven months apart.

I had brown hair. Little Bird had white-blond hair that must seemed to be demonized by static electricity. Her hair was much more like feathers to me.

It turned out that she had a matching brain. Her mouth was often open for a lot for different reasons. She was adorable.

Though 11 months apart in age, we were treated like twins. Whatever I got, Little Bird got one just like it in a coordinated color.

My mother regularly bought us new coloring books and crayons. Little Bird would open her book to page one, reach for her box of Crayolas, and begin to color inside the lines, choosing appropriate and tasteful color combinations. Little Bird was famous in our family for her ability to color inside the lines.

I felt pangs of some awful emotion when I looked at her coloring books. It made my chest hurt somewhere near my heart. She filled her coloring books completely and stacked them up carefully. Mine were a ragged raging mess of attempts to stay within the boundaries, with torn covers and the odd pages sticking their tongues out at you.

If you are guessing that she later became an art student, you are correct.

We grew up and older. She entered a serious personal crisis stage at some point. I don't know what brought it on, but one day she announced that she was not my real sister, that she was adopted. I was shocked. This was big news to me and everyone else in the family.

I felt that she was rejecting me in a really deep and personal way. I gave her pep talks about how, even if she were adopted, I had always thought of her as my real sister and didn't intend to change that viewpoint. She continued to stare at me with an icy glare.

Was I left out out of some family genealogy conference somewhere along the way? Why didn't I get that memo? Attention Family Members: Little Bird was found in a nest when we were taking a walk. We robbed it and told everyone that Little Bird was ours.

The last straw: she turned to me yet again and said, "I don't want to be your goon any more." I don't know what brought that on either, but it was clear that I was only imagining that she was my true blue sister and friend.

I had never heard her use that word before. Goon.

I had never thought of her as a goon, much less my own personal goon, but as she put it out there for me to understand, that she was quitting her job as my goon, it hit me that having a goon is a desirous thing and that not having one any longer would be a great setback for me in my march for world domination.

Things have never been the same since. I have had to manage my empire without goons, in fact, without any goon or goons at all.

I would like to have some useful horses, though.