trash wars.

My sister, Janine, is a brilliant human. She came up with some amazingly ingenious ways to cope with having a “monkey see, monkey do” and “I won’t do that just because it is something you want me to do” little sister like me. As many of you know, I do best when I feel like things are my idea, unforced, competitive, or fun. Janine figured this out quite early on in our sisterhood. She pulled a ruse on me that took me literal years to figure out the trickery behind. In the Bork household, every single trash can in the house gets emptied the day before trash day. This wasn’t a task I loved doing. There were so many other possibilities of what I could be doing with my time - beating a computer game yet again, building a new lego masterpiece, or simply doing anything else that would get me out of having to take out the trash. Janine has always been a masterful craftsman when it comes to finding ways to get me to do things. She invented this magical game called “Trash Wars.” Whoever emptied the most trash cans in the least amount of time won. It was brilliant. I won most of the time...because competition. Janine won just enough to keep me thinking that she really cared about the game (which she has informed me in later conversations that she actually did somewhat care). Here’s the kicker. Janine started this game pretty early on - maybe when I was 7 or 8? It took me until I was 14-15 to realize that she had tricked me into enjoying taking out the trash. Job well done, sister. Job well done!