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In my family, there are two things legendary about my sister: her luck, and her willpower.
One favorite story illustrates the latter with a simple graham cracker.
According to my mother, I was never spanked for the same thing twice. "You were such an easy baby," she always croons.
And then there's my little sister, Natalie, five years my junior. "She would've been our only child if she had been born first," my father always grumbles. Whereas I would respond to a single spanking, my sister in her Terrible Twos would have to be spanked three, four, even five times for the same offense.
And to add insult to her stubbornness, she would refuse to cry when spanked. After my mother set down the spatula, my sister would look back at her impassively, as though to say, "That all you got?" My mother, sobbing, would call my father at the office, wailing, "I don't think she'll ever learn!"
Natalie was lucky she was cute. Our parents often say that her giant brown eyes and Shirley Temple curls were the only things that saved her skin.
She was quite the cantankerous tot. Until her tiny iron will was finally broken.
But she didn't go lightly.
The story goes that, just after dinner, my sister was sitting at the table in her high chair. And, holding out her small chubby fist to my parents, she said, "Gam cacka!"
"Graham cracker?"
"Yes!"
"Say 'please'."
At this unsanctioned demand, my sister frowned and pursed her fat cheeks, withdrawing her hand to her chest, and with scandalized gusto, said:
"NO."
"Then no graham cracker."
She cried and screamed. She whined and pouted. My parents didn't budge. So she went to Plan B, shaking the arms of her high chair and whimpering, "Down! Down!"
"Not until you say 'please'."
"NO."
"Then you can't get down yet."
Oh, how she cried.
And oh, how she refused.
And thus began the battle of wills.
My mother took the first 20-minute shift, stubbornly running the same script with her tiny willful offspring.
"Do you want a graham cracker?"
"Yes!"
"Say 'please'."
"NO."
Crying. General melodrama. Rattling the high chair.
"Down! Down!"
"Not until you say 'please'."
"NO."
"Then you can't get down yet."
More crying.
Over and over and over again. Twenty minutes passed, and my mother threw up her hands. "I'm gonna throttle her - your turn," and my father took the second shift.
Every atom in my two-year-old sister's being would rather sit in that high chair and WIN than have that graham cracker.
"Do you want a graham cracker?"
"Yes!"
"Say 'please'."
"NO."
Wailing. Flailing curls and arms. Kicking the high chair.
"Down! Down!"
"Not until you say 'please'."
"NO."
"Then you can't get down yet."
More wailing.
Over and over and over again.
Forty minutes gone. My father reached his limit and turned it back to my mother.
"Say 'please'."
"NO."
Another twenty minutes passed.
Sixty minutes gone.
An hour of "NO".
She would not give up.
It's unclear who was in the hot seat when the miracle occurred, but finally, finally, whatever it was, something clicked.
Wearily, they asked again, "Natalie, do you want a graham cracker?"
"Yes."
"Say 'please'."
She hesitated, slumped down in her high chair. And then, with her chubby cheeks puffed out, her chin tucked into her chest, she sighed and reached out a pudgy little hand, saying:
"Peas."
I'm sure my parents' eyes bugged out - it was a Christmas miracle, on par with raising Lazarus from the dead.
After the shock passed, Natalie was praised for her obedience and then unbuckled from her high chair. She toddled happily away, curls bouncing, with a graham cracker tucked into her tiny fist.
"She finally got it. It was like night and day after that," my father always says with a snap of his fingers. "You would never know it was the same child."
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