kicking puppies is bad

Last month my sister turned 30. She decided she wanted to throw a spinster party. The idea was that people would have to wear muumuus and do spinstery things like knitting (or possibly yelling at small children). Of course my sister doesn’t have the follow-through to actually implement something like this. So “spinster party” never happened. I’m fairly glad. I hate theme parties.

Regardless, since she turned 30 the spinster comments have become fairly frequent. In fact, hardly a day goes by where the term spinster isn’t mentioned. Yesterday, I was having a conversation with her and she said, “I don’t think the spinster thing is going to work for me.” I was curious. She had previously seemed to embrace spinsterhood. So I asked why. She presented me with a list of three reasons:

• I have perfect vision. I’ll never be able to wear tiny glasses at the tip of my nose. And I’ll never be able to glare at people in a crotchety way over those glasses.
• I have the world’s meanest cat. Generally this would be an excellent spinstery thing. Spinsters always have mean cats. But Sabrina is so mean I can’t have any other cats. Which means I will never become a cat lady. (Note: Her cat really is *that* mean. Sabrina makes my cat (Endel) hide under the bed and pee in fear.)
• My hair is unruly and won’t stay in a bun. I tried.

She is right about the glasses and the cat. She is mostly right about the hair. Her hair won’t stay in a bun, but I don’t think that has anything to do with its unruliness (although she does have unruly Einstein like hair). I think the inability to maintain a spinster-bun is more likely caused by her lack of hair skill. She has no hair skill and she makes very little hair effort.

When we took a family vacation to Stratford in August, she lost her brush. Two weeks later she bought a new one. In the interim she just didn’t brush her hair. For TWO WEEKS. She says she occasionally walked to my house and borrowed my brush. Still, this means for TWO WEEKS her mane of untidy hair was mostly unbrushed. And she has fairly long curly unruly Einstein-like hair. It generally resembles a cross between a fiery tumbleweed and an electrocuted hamster.

When I told her I was writing about this, she said, “In all fairness, you didn’t notice I lost my brush until I told you”. I don’t think that helps her case. In fact, I think it supports my case. It just means that her hair always appears unkempt. Which is probably because even when she does have access to a brush, she doesn’t use it.

So my sister has decided that she fails as a spinster. I told her that this probably means that she has to start dating again. When I mentioned that, I think she decided to give spinsterhood another shot.