On Siblings and Shame

Maybe there's something productive about embarrassing the hell out of people you love.

“Are you writing about yourself in the past tense?”

We were in the back seat of the car on a family road trip. I was 17, and I was indeed writing about myself in the past tense.

Back then, it seemed quite clear to me that the natural progression of my life would eventually demand I document my incredible achievements in the form of an intimate memoir. For posterity. It would start with my humble beginnings as a child-genius, and eventually pass through my troubled teenage-years, including those formative days—which I was still very much in the midst of—working as a clerk in a movie store.

I figured I’d get a head start on that chapter. While it was still fresh.

“You are. You’re writing about your job in the past tense. Ben’s writing his life story, everybody.”

This was my sister. She had looked over my shoulder, sized up the situation almost instantly, and then loudly called me out on it. It was embarrassing.

Why do I still remember this, decades later? For the same reason I still remember this:

The year was 1999. I was in sixth grade and I had just secured one of the smallest speaking parts available for our junior high production of The Runt, a truly horrible stage play written specifically for intolerable junior high theatrical productions. I had only one line, which I no longer remember.¹

Around this time, I was obsessed with the band Citizen King, a Milwaukee-based one-hit-wonder responsible for the song “Better Days.”

The song got a lot of play on Wisconsin airwaves. The chorus goes like this:

I’ve seen better days
I’ve been star of many plays
I’ve seen better days
(and the bottom drops out)

One day after rehearsal, I was in the kitchen, singing the song aloud to myself. My sister walked in.

“What do you think, that’s like your theme song or something? Because you’re in a play? Ben’s like, ‘Hey, I’ve been ‘star of many plays!’’”

“Shut up! That’s not why I like the song!”

It is why I liked the song. Because I was in a play. And I thought it was my theme song.

She was, thankfully, only scratching the surface of that particular deep well of shame: my alternate, imagined life. See, I used to pretend that my life was a TV show. Not like some NBC multicam sitcom. This was a movie-quality, serialized drama with comedic elements. A dramatically heightened version of my life.

The promotional materials for that week’s episode—as I imagined them—included Citizen King’s song “Better Days,” along with a lot of cleverly edited footage that made me look funny, cool, well-liked, and yes, the star of my school play.²

My sister didn’t know any of that. But she knew enough. She could sense, in a heartbeat, my secret shame. She knew just from looking at me that something stupid and embarrassing was going on in my head, and she did what any good sister would do— loudly called me out on it in front of everybody.

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The very first time my sister truly saw through my bullshit, I was nine years old. I had climbed behind the wheel of my mom’s minivan—parked safely in the garage—and I was pretending to drive, turning the wheel, making engine sounds with my mouth. My sister walked out into the garage.

“Oh God,” she said, disgusted. “Stop pretending like you’re a normal kid.”

I knew instantly what she meant. I played dumb. “I’m just playing.”

“No, you’re not. You’re pretending to play because that’s what you think normal kids would do.”

How.

Did.

She.

Know.

I was indeed emulating what I believed a normal child would do. It was a hollow, joyless exercise, and I felt almost relieved when she liberated me from it.

It’s almost unfathomable that any human being could see into my soul so instantly and so accurately. To an onlooker, I was just a kid, pretending to drive a car. But not my sister. She saw through the artifice like a cheap strip of cellophane.

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There’s something inherently cruel about exposing the inner workings of another’s heart and mind. First and foremost, it inspires shame, a deeply unproductive emotion. But it can also have a ripping-off-the-bandaid effect. My sister didn’t just expose me, she destroyed my illusions: My premature memoir? Never wrote another word. That episode where I was the star of many plays? Underwent extensive reshoots. Pretending to pretend to play? A laborious waste of time that I never bothered with again.

She held up a mirror for me to see myself in a new way. Being self aware without being self conscious is a difficult needle to thread, but her semi-disgusted observational digs got me well on my way. And they have clearly stuck with me.

I have paid my sister back for her cruelty tenfold over the years. I have maybe overdone it. I have taken it too far and I have done it many times, inflicting cruelty just to get a laugh, mistaking her shocked cackle of discomfort as genuine amusement, then doubling down on it. Cumulatively, I think I’ve hurt her more than she’s hurt me. But I don’t really remember much of that. Because, well, she started it.

We’re three years apart in age, which I’ve always considered the sweet spot. There was no social overlap, little chance we’d ever run into each other at school, and yet we were close enough in maturity that we could have meaningful conversations and our own code of humor, a shared language that would have been impossible if I was any younger or she any older.

In some sense, no one has ever known me as well as she does. We’ve had decades of shared experiences. We have inside jokes that I don’t even realize are “inside jokes,” because I’ve known her my entire life. To me they’re just “jokes.” Our jokes.

On Thursday, she’ll fly out to Los Angeles to spend Thanksgiving with my family. I’ve been looking forward to it all month. I love Thanksgiving, and I love spending it with her. We’ll make each other laugh, we’ll make each other angry. We’ll accidentally hurt and intentionally amuse one another, ad nauseum.

When I think about my own son, I often wish that he had a little sister or brother, for his sake. Not just as a friend, but as a healthy adversary. So that somebody could not only see him, but also see through him. Because the little lies we tell ourselves, left unchecked, can compound into delusion and dysfunction. And if nothing else, a sibling is someone you can share your delusions and dysfunction with. They, in turn, can commiserate, encourage, or challenge you. Ideally all three.

It’s a privilege to have your authenticity held so stringently accountable by someone who wants nothing more than for you to be the best version of yourself. There’s no greater blessing than a sibling who will call you out on your bullshit.

So, while I’m thankful for a great many things this year, right near the top of that list is Chelsea, my big sister, and my best friend for life.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

1. Though I distinctly remember not nailing it.

2. I’ve never confessed the full extent of my “I’m living in a TV show” childhood delusion. But it was extensive. When I was mowing the lawn, I was mowing the lawn of the set of the TV show. It was such a realistic production that the studio had purchased an entire street—my street—and I, the star of the show, would come in to mow the lawn on weekends. Because, despite my fame, I was that grounded, and that committed to the role.