Backstory part 2: My seester

It began innocently enough, we had walked out onto the porch and discussed the characteristics and properties of a jump to wisconsin, the headwind, drag and associated gravitational effects seemed minimal from our hacienda on the shores (or not too far away from the shores) of lake michigan in the idle county of cook on a summer in the city of chicago. She said she could do it in one jump and proceeded to climb the railing to take flight and as she departed for points west (having little understanding of the directionality or position of our porch with regard to the land of cheese and beer) in a graceful but ultimately ankle breakingly tragic arc we all decided that flying maybe WAS for the birds. How we were later blamed for pushing her off the porch and onto the waiting brick border of our garden (a garden in name only since dirt was the only flower our family could grow) we will never fathom, we few noble men, we 3 brothers in crime where innocent... innocent I tell yah. She was tall and we called her "bossman" and taunted her when she wasn't protecting us from the bullies and roustabouts and 2 bit irish catholic parochial school bastards that hunted us poor public school saints. We had our own harrowing adventures (she and I) with our tank/baby-sitter/gram who smoked 500 packs of cigarettes a day, and liked us to nap so she could get a break from our experiments in creative house destruction. To this day I haven't smoked anything (more than tires on one of our legion of vintage automobiles) because of a promise Alanna extracted out of me during one of our gramtastic adventures. It seemed that at the age of 8 or 9 our grams smoking was the most interesting thing in the world and we didn't let up in our questioning of the activity until said tankgirl of the aughts dragged us into the kitchen, tossed two cigarettes onto the burners of the stove to light them and shoved them into our (now humble please get us outta here dear god don't not that yikes) mouths. "There!" gram grunted as fire shot from her eyes, "Smoke." Huddling in our room afterwards my sister made us each tearfully swear to never, ever touch the cancersticks (it was fairly obvious that smoking would lead to thick pseudo irish accents, shelalee clubbings, and fire shooting out of your eyes while you accosted small children and snored the shingles off of fine victorian homes of distinction and we wanted nothing to do with it). Our promise seemed to work until I broke both arms in a fateful revisiting of the porch railing (this time atop an 8' unicycle of my own design, but that's another story) was rushed to the emergency room, doped up on painkillers and dragged out, arms in casts to my first "explorer" party by said sister bossman confidant teen rebel trying to cheer up the numb 16 year old on his second day off for summer vacation. She smoked? She drank (so did I as my casts became canvases for duct taped beer cans and hastily scrawled "get wells" from the neighborhood scouts of distinction)! But.... we.... made a promise. The teen years were enlightening and growing up was a joy... but smoking? Luckily it didn't last long (youthful rebellion was writ small in our family because there was little to rebel against as we were mcmani against the world more than anything else). She was ultimately my secret weapon against becoming a complete social outcast, she still surprises me (I'm the one who could climb mountains as a youth, the monkeyboy of rogers park, and she's the one who now runs marathons while I make epic movements of bits and bytes as I exercise my fingers and fain health in the downward spiral of a body well past any sort of expected expiration date). I don't see Alanna much anymore, in our family where there was never really a goodbye or a hello, never a stranger that didn't become a friend/freeloader/dinner guest, never a need to call because life just happened and you were together when you were and love was a birthright and a waiting hug in our mother's arms (even when she was too weak to walk and we were gargantuan ogres of early middle gauge), but I know she's somewhere out there, the new center of gravity of the bombastic clan mcmani (because all the boys are so blind and callous that we'd be hardpressed to care for anyone but our own damn selves), bossman lives.