Despite having once pushed her down some stairs, my younger sister and I are very close. Whenever I deny that act of brutality, she shows me the speck of graphite under her skin where a freshly sharpened pencil pierced her leg on the way down, down, down, down, down. It's like a tiny, primitive tattoo serving as a permanent reminder that she’s my bitch.

This year we've been able to see each other often thanks to family weddings. She’s been living in southern California long enough to make fun of my Chicago accent and succumb to elective plastic surgery. She had her nose trimmed and her boobs expanded. Her ex-husband used to say making love to tall, double-A-cup Becca was like having sex with a prepubescent basketball player. (Cutting him loose was the best surgical choice my sister made.)

"Kuh-yew-YEWWWWWWW!"

"Kuh-yew-YEWWWWWWWWWWW!"

Our standard greeting. Our little way of screaming "I love you" in code. It's unbearably childish to an outsider, but when Bec and I are together, any semblance of maturity makes a run for the border. We're either laughing or crying, or crying from laughing.

I look good in my suburban uniform: khaki capris, flip flops and the short-sleeve denim blouse I just bought at a discount sporting goods chain. Bec looks okay; her lithe, five-foot, ten-inch, 129-pound, yoga-fit frame seamlessly adorned in an Adrianne Vitadinni ensemble with a scarf chicly and uniquely folded around her neck.

"God, you look great! Commando or thong?"

"Thong."

She's total class with a perfect ass.

There are other subtle differences between us. She still has the legs of a thoroughbred colt. My knees have started creeping towards my hooves. Becca has a perfectly placed beauty mark on her lofty left cheekbone. I have a giraffe's neck with an irregular freckle on the right side. She has pore-free, olive tone Mediterranean skin. I inherited Dad's German ruddiness with pores the size of moon craters. Growing up she never had a pimple. I chugged antibiotics and left DNA on every mirror in the house.

As a teen, Becca’s ash blonde hair fell to her waist and was as stick-straight as Barbie's little sister Skipper's. Mine was a confused brown-black mix, wavy and prone to pixie cuts. I once opted for Vidal Sassoon’s signature short style with faux sideburns. Coupled with dark tortoise frame glasses and shiny braces, I looked like the stand-in for Ernie on “My Three Sons”.

Becca never failed a school screening with her perfect vision. But she’s forty-eight now...

"God. My arms aren't long enough to see the numbers on my cell phone. Where are my reading glasses? You are so lucky you can see things close up."

"Oh yeah. Wearing glasses since sixth grade and becoming more myopic at every checkup is really paying off. I am soooo lucky! The rope-sized veins in my eyes from years of wearing hard contact lenses are just icing on the cake. Watch this...I can hold a book or cell phone two inches from my convex-shaped eyeballs and read them with ease. In my face, Becca!"

"Okay, okay. Just hand me my glasses."

"I would...but I can’t see them. They must be more than an arm's length away.

Somehow we see our way to the wedding. It’s outdoors. It’s August. It’s Texas.

It's hotter than jalapeno dip. What was the bride thinking?

In the middle of the ceremony, Pastor “Geezer John” (that's what he calls himself) asks the bride, "Are you okay?" Jennifer snaps: "I'm HOT!" and her eyes shoot flames in his direction.

Geezer J has us standing up and sitting down so many times it's like some sort of sadistic Simon Says game and he's trying to trick someone into remaining standing -- caught with their hand in their ass trying to free fabric from its puckered prison.

I'm so annoyed I ask the person behind me to take over the next time I have to stand up. I think I pulled a muscle on the last reach-around.

In spite of the uncomfortable climate, Bec and I are the first ones on the dance floor. We coax each other into performing provocative interpretations of whatever lyrics are being sung. The bawdier the better for me.

All during the Temptations’ trademark song, I'm doing a flight attendant exit-point to my crotch for every harmonic "my girrrl" that rings out. I grab a couple of the cardboard paddle fans each guest received and start doing a Gypsy Lee dance. The decorative fans cover my boobs as if they were custom-fitted; the little bows on them are close enough to tassels for me. I work the fans over "my girl" like a pro.

By the last dance everybody's dress is sweat-soaked anyway so I grab a bottle of water and start splashing it over anyone in the vicinity. Becca removes her shoes to avoid slipping, but her size nine-and-a-half gunboats literally ski across a puddle. Without the aid of a towrope, her feet fly up and her boyish bum lands hard. Oh, the humanity.

And the band plays on.

The expression on Becca's face is priceless. She's embarrassed but still looks first class, while I look first ass for spilling water all over the linoleum dance floor. As I offer MY Girl a hand up, I can't help thinking of the yoga mantra Becca once shared with me. I hope she's reciting it to herself right now: "Think of nothing. Feel everything."

Then I run for a sharp pencil to commemorate the fall.