Taking Annaka’s usual spot this month is her sister, Erin Koster. Erin (‘16) studied writing and Greek at Calvin and recently graduated from Western Theological Seminary. Now that she’s finally done with school, she works at a local church and spends her time drinking tea, reading her sister’s posts for the post calvin, and being used as a piece of furniture by her cat, Sassafras.
If you happen to be a semi-regular reader of the post calvin (or just happen to be friends with me or a member of my family), there is a good chance you are at least passingly familiar with my sister Annaka and her writings—in which case you are also, though you may not know it, passingly familiar with me. Such is the danger of being a friend or family of someone who writes, preaches, or ever has to make small talk with another human being.
Of her thirty-five posts to date, I make a brief cameo in five of them. This gives me an approximately 14.3% appearance rate, which is really a lot more than I deserve given my lack of attempted snail ownership and amusing library anecdotes. Given that she’s also been bugging me for a guest post ever since she joined the editorial board and that she does like to try and convince people she’s the older of the two of us (and they usually believe her), I thought I’d take the opportunity to set the record straight.
But here’s the problem: everything she’s said about me on this blog? It’s all true.
Well, pretty much.
My Coworker’s Cat Almost Killed Us Both
“3. Called my cat-owning sister”
I was, if I do say so myself, almost entirely useless in this situation. My cat’s most significant escapade to date is the simple fact that instead of hiding in the cat bed I put in a corner for her when I first got her, she chose to hide behind the toilet where she was more visible and less comfortable. She’s also too fat to do much running or fit in most hiding spots, so my cat-finding experience is quite limited.
“If Annaka ever married, it came as an extreme shock to everyone involved and she owes her sister five dollars.”
The backstory: the aforementioned $5 owed to me upon the event of Annaka’s marriage is due to a bet purportedly made when we were in high school over whose imaginary future fiancé would propose more creatively. While I recall the conversation, our memories differ after a certain point. While Annaka maintains that we did in fact make the bet, I maintain that I wouldn’t have taken it because I wouldn’t have wanted a creative proposal, while she wouldn’t need to make it due to not being terribly interested in receiving a proposal at all. But if she does get married in the future and wants to will me $5 after her potentially untimely demise, I won’t say no to drinking a latte in her honor.
[Editor’s note: We absolutely made with bet and I have evidence to prove it.]
“My sister likes to tell me that spoilers . . . do not actually “spoil” stories. Despite a smattering of evidence in her favor, she’s wrong about this, and I will never be convinced otherwise.”
There aren’t very many hills I’m willing to die on, but I’d give a limb for this one. While I’ll admit that there are some things I wish I hadn’t been spoiled on, I’m usually more interested in how the author is going to get to the place than in guessing where they’re going. And as a person somewhat prone to anxiety, I’d rather use my energy on enjoying that than on being anxious about what’s going to happen. I was also a classics major and a seminary student, and it’s hard to care a lot about spoilers when you have a degree in stories that have been told and retold for a few thousand years.
“It’s important that you know that my sister is a redhead.”
It’s really, really not. But it comes up remarkably often in my life, including the time I was told in front of about 150 people that having red hair meant I wanted to do great in America. I’m relatively sure the speaker was trying to make a joke about how you don’t go into ministry for the money unless you’re aiming to preach to people like my grandma who watch the lineup of preachers on channel 84 every Sunday, but I’m still not sure what my hair color has to do with it.
“But my sister is a good person. Good to the point where she begins to feel honest, soul-wearying guilt about how effortlessly she’s destroying us all in Jeopardy! and Trivia Murder Party. So I’m miserable because I’m losing and she’s miserable because she’s winning.”
Sometimes I tell people that I’m the most non-competitive person I know, which is both ironic as a statement and true. I’m not always miserable when I’m winning, though—it is fun to win. But the issue is that I don’t have less fun if I lose, and more competitive people like my sister do. And I want all of us to have fun. The good news is that we have, in fact, won Forbidden Desert a few times since then—and that it’s still fun to mock my sister for leaving me to die in the desert.
(Our friends got us more two-player co-op games for Christmas. We haven’t had the chance to try them yet, but it was probably a good idea.)
Erin Koster (‘16) studied writing and Greek at Calvin and recently graduated from Western Theological Seminary. Now that she’s finally done with school, she works at a local church and spends her time drinking tea, reading her sister’s posts for the post calvin, and being used as a piece of furniture by her cat, Sassafras.
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I love this post, Erin! It’s always strange writing about other people (or being written about). I’m glad that Annaka was finally able to twist your arm into contributing again—I miss reading what you write.