People worship their cell phones, whittling away happy hours of texting, typing, e-mailing and surfing. There’s nothing you can’t do with those little gadgets. Really, though. The high tech generation is in contact with hundreds, maybe thousands of people every day, but who’s going to answer your call at three a.m. when your life has gone down the tubes? Your casual Facebook friends? The Twittery acquaintances or texting buddies? The three a.m. people are the ones who really have your back and for me, that’s my sisters.
I’ve got three of ‘em and believe you me, we didn’t (and don’t) always get along. I have plenty of memories of snits and tantrums, jealousies and the occasional practical joke. I myself have to cop to taking the nuts out of my sister’s peanuts and gluing the empty shells together. Sometimes we could hardly stand each other and I’m sure my mother probably wondered why she kept going after kid #1.
I’m #2 in the lineup and I’ve grown into a… well, in the spirit of full disclosure, I can be hard to like. I steep myself in work when I should be hanging out with family, especially a certain adorable new goddaughter. I am technologically inept to the point where my big sister had to inform me how to get messages on my cell phone. I’ve been known to forget birthdays, anniversaries and other important events. I demand huge hours of editing assistance from sis #1 to write my books and I’ve coddled my neurotic dog so much that sis #4 travels at great inconvenience to herself to “dog sit” so I can vacation with my peeps. All in all, I’m not the biggest prize as sisters go.
Still. At that dreaded three a.m. hour, who you gonna call? No question. Any one of the three would drop everything and run to help me. Sick child needing a middle of the night hospital run? Bad biopsy? Fire? Flood? Lost dog? Lost kid? Lost my mind? They are the people whom I can trust with the bad stuff, the ugly stuff, the scary things that all the Facebookers, Twitterers and Texters will never know about.
Who are your three a.m. people?